News of Southern Photographers -- Early Winter 2015 Edition

 

Several items of interest here in the waning hours of 2015 --

1. Nashville-based photographer Jerry Park has announced the publication of his first book, Slow Roads Tennessee, available here.

Park's book is drawn from work he made over a 2-year period while roaming the backroads of Tennessee with a Holga camera.  
 
Publication of Slow Roads Tennessee was celebrated by a show of this work this month at Nashville's Arts Company, go here. 

Park is a member of SouthLight Salon, a group of 7 photographers in Nashville, including Jerry Atnip, who concentrate on Southern photography and are deeply committed to enhancing the quality of art in our region. 

2.  Atlanta-based photographer Forest McMullin has recently been getting lots of recognition for work from his Black Cowboys (and Girls) portfolio, documenting the world of African-American rodeos.

See coverage here, in LensCulture, also here, in feature shoot, also here, from Manfrotto.

McMullin reminds us that African-Americans constituted a significant proportion of the folks who settled the American West, although their role has been largely ignored by historians and the media.

 This tradition is kept alive today by a network of rodeos -- notably the Bill Pickett Rodeos -- who feature especially participants who are black.  

3. Dallas-based photographer Rachael Banks (see image above) was interviewed about her work recently by the Strange Fire Collective, go here.

4. Southern photographers Deborah Luster (see image above) and Sally Mann (see image below) have work in a show that opened in October 2015 at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, TN.  

This show is entitled Phantom Bodies: The Human Aura in Art, and includes, along with Luster and Mann, a bunch of heavy hitters in the current art world like Damien Hirst, Gerhard Richter, and Magdalena Abakanowicz.

There is still time to see this show, since it is up at the Frist Center until mid-February 2016.  

5. Among the books chosen by Elizabeth Avedon as the best photography books of 2015 are GORDON PARKS: BACK TO FORT SCOTT, edited by Karen Hass (see image above) and ALPHABET, by Debbie Fleming Caffery (see image below)

 6. Lenscratch, on its list of the best of 2015, included photographs by Alabama-based photographer Jared Ragland (see image below), from their State of Alabama project. 

 8. Lenscratch also liked Winston-Salem-based photographer Heather Evans Smith's Seen but not Heard portfolio as a favorite (see image below).

7. Aline Smthson, editor of Lenscratch, listed Lori Vrba's The Moth Wing Diaries and McNair Evans' Confession for a Son, as among her favorite photography books of 2015. 

8. And finally, for now, and for 2015, Jeff Rich in December 2015 featured Atlanta-based photographer Blake Burton's portfolio Ponce City Market (see image above) in his Eyes on the South series, for the Oxford American.

And that's my take on fine art photography in the American South for 2015. 

We'll be back next year, folks.