The career of the Distinguished Southern Photographer Burk Uzzle is about to be featured in three simultaneous
retrospective exhibitions of his work.
The North Carolina Museum of Art
in Raleigh, the Ackland Art Museum at the University of North Carolina -
Chapel Hill, and Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in Durham will all feature Uzzle's work in major exhibitions.
This remarkable trifecta of solo shows represents an extraordinary -- and richly deserved -- celebration of Uzzle's achievement as a photographer and as an artist.
The directors and curators of each museum have collaborated in s
electing pictures spanning the last five decades of Uzzle's ongoing career to offer distinct portfolios of the work.
Also, in the spring of 2017, the Greenville Museum of Art in Greenville, NC
will exhibit Uzzle's most recent work, including his portraits made in eastern North Carolina's African-American communities and newly commissioned studies of this region in North Carolina.
Uzzle began his career as a photographer by working as a photojournalist in Raleigh, NC, but quickly moved to a national stage.
After stints as a contract photographer for the Black Star Agency and for LIFE, Uzzle joined the photo agency Magnum, which he would lead for a time.
In the process Uzzle made some of the iconic photographs of the 1960's and 1970's, attending especially to the Woodstock Music Festival and the Civil Rights Movement.
Uzzle has worked as an independent photographer since the 1980's, most recently in eastern North Carolina.
Uzzle now likes to say he engages in what he appropriately calls "photographic appreciation of the quiet, strong, and eloquent beauty he discovers in America’s small towns and its people."
This chance to see and delight in Uzzle's extraordinary achievement as a photographer is not to be missed. Mark your calendars now.
For more on Uzzle's extraordinary career, go here.
The Georgia Review for Winter 2016 is an important one for Southern photography.
As we noted in the entry on Cynthia Henebry, this issue features her prize winning image Mavis in the Backseat on the cover.
In addition, this issue includes an essay on the history and mission of the Do Good Fund, here, and a portfolio of thirteen photographs from the Do Good Fund, including work by Maude Schuyler Clay (see image above), Tamora Reynolds (see image below), and Pamela Pecchio (see image #2 below).
In addition, this issue of the Georgia Review also contains the transcript of an extended interview with Alan Rothschild, founder of the Do Good Fund, entitled Tracing the American South, go here.
Conducted by Tom Rankin and Rachel Boillot of Duke's Center for Documentary Studies, this interview ranges widely over the history, goals, and guiding principles of the Do Good Fund.
Here's a sample of what Rothschild has to say:
One of the reasons for collecting photographs is that "we can take the collection to places such as storefront galleries in
small towns.
[They] may not have the perfect museum temperature or the
perfect museum lighting, but we can show images in spaces that most
museums shy away from.
"We had a pop-up show in an old cotton gin in
Atlanta and brought in a crowd of 125 folks under thirty years old to
see the show. I hope that got them interested in going to galleries and
museums and seeing more.
"My exit strategy is that when the project gets
too big for out volunteer group, or if something happens to me and
others are not as interested in t as I am, it’s going to be a collection
that will be strong enough for a regional museum to pick up as their
own."
Sounds good to me.
Congratulations to Rothschild for all his good work with the Do Good Fund, and thanks to Rankin and to Boillot, and to the Georgia Review for bringing Rothschild and the Fund well-deserved recognition!
Richmond, VA-based photographer Cynthia Henebry is off to a splendid 2016!
Henebry's image Mavis in the Backseat (see image above), from her The Marriage Oaks portfolio, is currently on display at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, as part of the exhibit of finalists in the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, up now through January 8th, 2017.
Heneby's image was awarded second place in this national, all-media competition.
This is an extraordinary honor for Henebry, since The Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition received over 2500 submissions from artists from across the country.
The work submitted exhibited what the Portrait Gallery describes as a "dazzling variety of media and diverse approaches to the exploration of 'self' and 'other,'" challenging "preconceived notions of portraiture" that will "expand visitors’ imaginations"
The jurors at the National Portrait Gallery initially chose 50 finalists, whose work is now on display in Washington.
Mavis in the Backseat, Henebry's winning image, is also the cover image on the Winter 2016 issue of The Georgia Review,
In addition, Henebry has a major solo show of her work -- Cynthia Henebry: Photographs -- on display until March 25 at the Babcock Gallery at Sweet Briar College, in Virginia.
Henebry also had a fine 2015, with work in numerous shows, including ones at the Houston Center for Photography; the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, in Richmond; the Cleveland Print Room, in Cleveland, OH; the Page Bond Gallery, in Richmond, VA; the Camden Image Gallery, in London; and the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center, in Brattleboro, VT.
Congratulations to Henebry for getting her career off to such a strong start. And, since its only March, who knows what the future will bring!
Chris Curry and all the good folks at Slow Exposures have released details for this year's renewal of their annual festival of rural Southern photography.
This year's festival will take place over four Slow Days in Pike County, Georgia, running from September 15th - 18th of 2016.
The Call for Entries for SlowExposures has now been posted.
This year's jurors are David Carol and Eliot Dudik. The deadline for submitting your entries is midnight on Sunday, June 19th, 2016.
Slow Exposures is a wonderful event, very much about Fine Art Photography and about the American South.
Here is the official Mission Statement of the Slow Exposures festival, which sorta says it all.
"Place
matters. Art matters. So does community. And, when the three are mixed
together by the SlowExposures volunteers--both natives and immigrants to
the American South, a peculiar alchemy occurs.
"Backgrounds, religions,
cultures, and political affiliations fall away in the creative challenge
of putting on the juried exhibition that showcases photography of the
rural southeast United States.
"The result: An annual crop of pictures
that manages to both pay homage to, and confound the stereotypes of the
region.
"We present the work in historic buildings that tell the story of
this long-time, cotton-growing region.
"Our intention is to support the
re-purposing of these places that hold our community’s memories and
history."
So its time to make your plans to take part in this year's Slow Exposures.
See the Call for Entries page for further information and for access to the application process.
February 26th, 2016 has been proclaimed officially to be Alysia Burton Steele Day in honor of Oxford, MS-based photographer Alysia Burton Steele and her new book Delta Jewels (see image below), available here.
Steele's book documents her search for her grandmother's wisdom, which Steele finds among the Church Mothers of the Mississippi Delta region, women who, Steele finds, organize community life, provide comfort
and support to those in need, help preserve traditions, and inspire young women in their communities.
Congratulations to Steele, and to the good folks of Baton Rouge for recognizing Steele's contribution, through her photography, to the development of Southern culture and to our understanding of the Southern experience.
