Eyes on the South -- Late Spring 2017

 
Since we last checked in with Jeff Rich's ongoing Eyes on the South, for the Oxford American, the following photographers have been featured:

1. Houston-born but Iowa-based photographer Micah Fields (see image above), with images from his Houston, Saturated portfolio. 

2.  New Orleans-based photographer Virginia Hanusik (see image above), with images from her Impossible City portfolio. 

 3. Myrtle Beach, SC-based photographer Tyler MacDonald (see image above), with images from his Above the Surface portfolio. 

 
4. Sarasota, FL-based photographer Carson Gilliland (see image above) with images from his I Need Some Rest portfolio. 
 

5. Baltimore-based photographer Ajay Malghan (see image above), with images from his Richmond Slave Trail portfolio.

6. Louisville, KY-based photographer Patrick Wensink (see image above), with images from his Alleys of Louisville portfolio.

7. Brunswick, ME-based photographer Michael Kolster (see image above), with images from his Take Me to the River portfolio.

Thanks to Rich for this ongoing labor of love, about Southern photography. 

Ford Yates Outside

I'm not sure when straightforward nature photography becomes fine art photography -- one of those perennial issues of intention, definition, and taste -- but photographs of snakes keep popping up in photography by Southern photographers clearly made with gallery exhibition in mind.

So it seems not at all inappropriate to let you know that Outside Magazine thinks that we should be following the work of Ford Yates (see image above), a business major at the University of Oklahoma. 

So, check out his work, and let me know what you think.

Eudora Welty at the NC Museum of Art

The North Carolina Museum of Art continues to deepen its engagement with Southern photography, now with a show of work by Distinguished Southern photographer Eurora Welty (see image above). 

This show, Looking South: Photographs by Eurora Welty, opened in April and is up through September 3rd, 2017.

The show of Welty's work includes 18 of Welty's images produced by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History in 1992.

The folks at Archives and History consulted with Welty about the selection of images and about Welty's preferred printing techniques when developing this portfolio with the goal of producing a portfolio representative of her photographs made in Mississippi in the 1930's and 1940's.

The folks at the NC Museum of Art note that "Welty’s iconic images of the South during this time bring to mind the photographs of Helen Levitt, Dorothea Lange, and Walker Evans, among others.  

"In comparing Welty’s work to Levitt’s photographs of New York, critic John Szarkowski wrote, 'Like those of Levitt, Welty’s photographs do not show us the only truths of her subjects’ lives; perhaps they show us only the rarest and most evanescent truths, in which case we are the more grateful for these proofs of their existence.'" 

Welty is of course best known as a writer of fiction. Good to be reminded by the NC Museum of Art that she was a distinguished visual artist as well as a verbal one.

Eich and Brody in Photo District News

Photo District News is out with its annual listing of photographers who produced "outstanding photography" in the previous year. 

Included among the photographers whose work earned them this designation is Charlottesville, VA-based photographer Matt Eich (see image above), in the Photobook division, for his book Carry Me Ohio.

Eich describes this body of work as "a decade-long photo essay about life in the economically depressed region of Southeast Ohio."

Eich says of his subjects, “Despite circumstances, these proud Americans persevere and cling to family, community and land with an admirable tenacity." 

Yet, he goes on, "Our collective memory favors the convenience of amnesia over acknowledging the damage that we continue to inflict upon ourselves.”

Among photographers featured in PDN's student division is Savannah-based photographer Anna Brody (see image above), with work from her Edging, GA portfolio.

Brody, a student at the Savannah College of Art and Design, says of her work, that it depicts "an imagined town" through which she "ponders the concept of being in an incomplete state—to be 'almost' something."

Brody says, “Maybe that’s what I take pictures of—people and things that are also almost there, who are almost done looking.”

Congratulations to both Eich and Brody for being chosen by PDN for this national recognition! 

And, if I missed any other Southern photographers among PDN's award-winners, please let me know and I will update this list.

Southern Photography at the Ogden Museum

New Orleans' Ogden Museum of Southern Art can always be counted on for exceptionally fine exhibitions of Southern photography.

This weekend, for example, the folks at the Ogden are closing their current show, Part II of a pair of shows under the title A Place and Time, up since February 2nd, 2017. Both these shows have sought to demonstrate the breadth and depth of the Ogden's permanent collection of photography.

Part I of this two-part show was up at the Ogden in the spring of 2016. It included photographs from the Civil War, Reconstruction, and early 20th century, with a special emphasis on photographs of New Orleans and on Depression-era documentary work by Works Progress Administration (WPA) and Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographers. 

This second show picks up the story in 1946 and explores, in the Ogden's words, "the trajectory of Southern photography" as it documents "the changing post-World War II American South" to the present day. 

Opening next at the Ogden are two shows about color photography in the American South.

The first is an exhibition of images by William Eggleston (see image above) from his Troubled Waters portfolio, from the late 1970's, made in the aftermath of his landmark exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

This body of Eggleston's work is mostly about what the Odgen describes as "rural and roadside life in and around the Mississippi Delta, Memphis, and points between."

The Ogden's second show is entitled The Colourful South, and features work by five pioneers in color photography -- William Christenberry, Birney Imes (see image above), William Greiner, William Ferris, and Alec Soth.

According to the folks at the Ogden, "this exhibition explores the role color photography has played in the history of Southern photography," traces "the influence of each photographer upon one another, and situates their work in a larger narrative of photography in the South after William Eggleston."

Both of these shows open on June 10th, and are up at the Ogden through October 10th, 2017. 

So, much fine Southern photography to see at the Odgen, in New Orleans. 

We owe the folks at the Ogden many thanks for their devotion to Southern photography.