John Bennette's Exploration of Southern Photography

Alabama native and New York photography collector John Bennette is planning a special exhibition to be part of this year's Slow Exposures photography festival in Pike County, Georgia. John is planning this exhibition to explore basic questions about southern photography, including matters of influence, subject matter, feeling, light, shadow, and ambiance. He is interested in the persistence of "southernness" for one who has left and yet returns.

Here's John on the issues as he sees them:

"Are most contemporary photographers of the south haunted by Christenberry, Evans, and McLaughlin or is something else at work? The land itself is a character that overwhelms and seems always ready for its moment. You cannot get away from history. Memories are soaked into the land and the people who dwell on that land. It is easy to fall into dreams and reverie. Looking at southern light and shadows summon shifting memories; sight exposes you to voices from the past"

John has announced the following photographers as the core of folks around whom the show will center, though others will be added as the opening of thee exhibit draws near. This list includes Southerners engaged in photgrpahy as well as nonSoutherners who have made photographs in the South.

One image that might make it into this show is Brenda Fayard's image Proud Ride (pictured above).  All these folks are worthy photographers with websites worth exploring for a sense of what John is getting at with this show.

• William Chambers
• Brenda Fayard
• Rob Hann
• Jessica Hines
• Jane Robbins Kerr
• Joanna Knox
• Donna Rosser
• Anderson Scott
• Jerry Siegel
• Jo Lynn Still
• Hai Zhang

John's show opens at the Whiskey Bonding Barn in Pike County on September 17th, 2010. We will revisit this topic when John's show list is released to see what sense of the "Southern" in photography John comes up with.

Tim Barnwell Show at the Asheville Art Museum

If you are in Asheville -- and that's always a great place to be -- check out Tim Barnwell's show at the Asheville Art Museum, called Hands in Harmony:  Traditional Crafts and Music in Appalachia, and up through October 10, 2010.
 
Tim is of course a distinguished photographer based in western North Carolina who has made a career of documenting life in Appalachia. This exhibition includes approximately 30 black-and-white portraits of well-known -- and less well-known -- people involved in Appalachian music and crafts.

Tim's work has been widely exhibited, including at the NC Museum of History, and published in books and journal articles. He has work in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Asheville Art Museum, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Greenville County Museum of Art, Western Carolina University, Mars Hill College and R.J. Reynolds Industries. His book, Hands in Harmony: Traditional Crafts and Music in Appalachia was published in 2009.

Tim was also the juror for the Slow Exposures show in Pike County, Georgia, last year. This show is well worth checking out, especially if you are a fan of beautiful and well-seen black and white work.

Keith Carter Show at Galerie BMG

Texas photographer Keith Carter is having a show of his work at Galerie BMG in Woodstock, NY, through June 28, 2010. The work on display is from his portfolio By Twilight, documenting his mother Jane's last year of life. Mrs. Carter, a children’s portrait photographer, died of Alzheimer’s disease.

This is powerful, haunting photography. Carter presents his portraits of his mother lovingly, yet evocatively of her own history as a photographer, even as she recedes into the darkness.

Keith is an award-winning photographer and educator who is the Walles Professor of Art at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. He has exhibited his photographs in Europe and Latin America as well as across the USA. He has published eleven books of photography.

Peter Sekaer Photographs the South

The High Museum of Art in Atlanta currently has on exhibit a body of work from the 1930's and 1940's made in the South by the Dutch photographer Peter Sekaer.

Sekaer traveled through the South with Walker Evans on exhibitions funded by the Farm Service Administration. His work provides an engaging contrast to Evans' iconic images of rural Southern poverty, not so much challenging but enriching and broadening the view we get from Evans' work.

The show is called Signs of Life and features over 80 photographs, including images of folk art and ads for ice cream as well as of signs of segregation, child labor, and chain gangs on the roads. It will be up through January 9, 2011.

Slow Exposures Show Deadline EXTENDED

Slow Exposures has extended its submission deadline to 11:59 pm on Thursday, June 17th, due to a problem with the submission system. Chris and all the folks in Pike County, GA who are responsible for the annual Slow Exposures Photography Show have issued a call for submissions, with a due date now of 11:59 pm on June 17th.

The Slow Exposures Show  is the annual juried show of photography with the intent, as they say, of "exploring the diversity, contradictions, and complexity of today's rural South." It will be up this year from September 17-26, 2010 in Concord, GA, one hour south of Atlanta.

Slow Exposures is nominally part of the larger festival Atlanta Celebrates Photography, but it is far more than just another photography show. It is really a festival in and of itself, with a portfolio review and other activities, including a splendid dinner at Chris's farm outside Griffin, GA, and a black tie Slow Exposures Ball.

Yes, a black tie Ball. Not to mention satellite photography shows and a Salon on the Business of Photography.   Participants in the Salon this year include John Bennette, Tony Cassadonte, Rob MacDonald, and Gary Gruby.

Submissions can be made on-line. Jurors this year include the Mississippi photographer Jack Spencer and Brett Levine, Director of the Visual Arts Gallery at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.