Updates -- Diana Bloomfield, Leon Alesi, and Donna Pinckley

The daffodils and the snowdrops are out, and the dogwoods look like they will be in bloom before we know it. So even though the winter was long and cold for us, the signs of spring in the South are unmistakable. That also means the spring exhibit schedule is beginning to unfold.

Here in Raleigh, my friend Diana Bloomfield, a long-time photographer working with pinhole cameras and alternative processes, is opening a show this weekend at Adam Cave Gallery in downtown Raleigh. Her recent work with color, including the image above of a tobacco barn in Ruffin, NC, printed with the tri-color gum bichromate process, has an uncanny ability to capture the intensity of color we get in the full light of the summer's sun.

Also, there is fine new work by Austin, Texas-based photographer Leon Alesi  in the latest issue of the on-line photography magazine Fraction. Alesi has found some folks who look like they have become trapped in a run-down suburb of Austin, or for that matter, AnyCity in the South.

Finally, at least for now, Little Rock, AK-based photographer Donna Pinckley is the latest Southern photographer to be featured at One One Thousand, where we see strong evidence of her ability to rejuvenate the oldest compositional technique of all, by putting the subject in the center of the frame. Here, the subjects want to be just where she puts them, deserving of this kind of concentrated attention.