Southern Photography Festivals -- Late Fall 2017

 

The days are getting shorter, the weather is getting cooler, and across the South we are gearing up for the second round of fall photography festivals.

FotoWeekDC is only a few weeks away, now, running from November 11th-19th, 2017 in Our Nation's Capitol. 

You can find the full schedule of events on their website, go here.

 December will bring us PhotoNOLA, this year running from December 7th-10th, 2017. 

For the full calendar of events for this year's festival, go here.

An annual feature of PhotoNOLA is the show at the New Orleans Photo Alliance of the previous year's winner of the PhotoNOLA Review Prize, which for 2016 was Samantha Geballe (see image above). 

 
Looking ahead, winter 2018 brings us another edition of FOTOFEST, Houston's biennial photography festival, to be held March 10 - April 22, 2018.

For the schedule for this year's FOTOFEST 2018 Biennial, go here.

So much to see, and to celebrate, in the world of Southern photography! 

SlowExposures 2017 -- A Pastoral

Once a year, the communities in Pike County, Georgia become the center of the universe for Southern fine art photography. 

Suddenly, renovated warehouses and storefronts become art galleries, stuffed with photographs and photographers. 

Photographers and photography fans from across the South, and across the nation, flock to see the work, and to renew friendships, and meet new friends.

This all happens because of SlowExposures, the annual festival of Southern photography, which took place this year in Pike County, on September the 14th through the 17th, 2017. 

Arnika Dawkins and I had the privilege of jurying this year's Main Show at SlowExposures.

We started with over 850 images, with the challenge of getting the collection of images down to 75. 

The overall quality of the images submitted was very high. We could easily have chosen a show double the size of the one we had to choose without diminishing the overall quality of the show. 

As I said at the Jurors' Talk in Concord, I wanted at a minimum to have our show reflect the breadth and diversity of Southern rural and small town life. I wanted, at a minimum, to avoid overworked subjects and sentimental or nostalgic treatments.

Arnika had her own goals and interests, but we must have shared a good bit of common ground, because the process of making our choices for the Main Show proceeded with remarkable smoothness. 

When Arnika and I got to Strickland's in Concord, site of the Main Show at SlowEx, on the morning of the 14th, we had the challenge of selecting the top images out of our final 76 selections for the Man Show.

This was even more difficult than making our original selections. But,gradually, as we discussed our choices, Brandon Thibodeaux's image Choo Choo with his Bible (see first image above) emerged as our first place entry, receiving the Paul Conlan Prize.

Second place went to M. L. Miller's Window Gazers (see image just above). 

Third Place went to Dale Niles' image Pardon? (see image above), which also received the People's Choice Award, based on voting by guests at the show.

We also chose ten Honorable Mentions, and you can see their work if you go here to the SlowEx website. 

There was so much else going on in Pike County that weekend -- the satellite shows, and the pop-up shows, and the receptions and dinners.

Watch for more coverage of this year's SlowEx as time goes by, here, on The Southern Photographer!
 

Southern Photographers in the News -- Mid-Fall 2017

Honorary Southern Photographer Dawoud Bey (see image above) has been named the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. 

For more on Bey's career and his genius award, go here for the Chicago Tribune story, and here, for the Washington Post story.  

Greensboro-based artist Rhiannon Giddens also received a MacArthur Fellowship, but she's a musician, not a photographer. 

Former Lexington, VA photographer and gallery owner -- and now Gallery Director at Panopticon Gallery,in Boston, MA -- Kat Kiernan (see her to the right in the image above) has been profiled on Elin Spring's blog, go here. 

Kiernan has opened her first show at the Panopticon Gallery, which includes work by Raleigh-based photographer Diana Bloomfield (see image above) go here.

Bloomfield will be part of a two-person show with Amy Friend -- at Panopticon, entitled  Alchemists, go here. 

This show opens November 3rd and is up in Boston until December 30, 2017.

Nashville-based photographer Tamara Reynolds (see image above) has had work from her The Drake portfolio featured on the fotoroom blog, go here. 

 
Distinguished Southern Photographer William Eggleston (see image above by NY Times photographer Andrea Morales) continues to be noticed for his his expansion of his artistic media to include composing and performing music, go here. 

More to come on the Southern Photographer! 

Southern Photographers on the Fence in Durham

An installation of THE FENCE is now up in Durham, NC, as part of the CLICK! Triangle Photography Festival. 

You can see it on the fence across from Durham's City Hall, in downtown Durham, through November of 2017.

Local photographers with work on the FENCE include the following:

Bryce Lankard | Drawn to Water,   
Chris Ogden | Stones Echo 
Gesche Würfel | SE Raleigh
Joe Lipka | The Labyrinth 
Leah Sobsey | Collections 
Marthanna Yater | Growing Together: A Study of Twin Sisters Over 32 Years 
Sarah Dale | It Brings All Things They Say 
Shawn Rocco | Flickerland (Series II) 
Warren Hicks | Urban Display

Much more to see in the Triangle through October, all part of CLICK!
 

A Celebration of Southern Photography at Southern Miss

Folks at the University of Southern Mississippi, in Hattiesburg, are celebrating Southern photography in a big way this October.

The Celebration includes two shows. 

The first, opening in the university's Gammill Gallery on Tuesday, October 10th, 2017, is Portraits of Southerners: Photographs from The Do Good Fund, up through Nov. 3rd, 2017.

The second, entitled Mississippi Landscapes: Places in the Land, opens in the Cook Library Art Gallery on October 12th and will be up through December 15th, 2017. 

This show features images by Mississippi photographers  Ashleigh Coleman Thomas Pearson, Euphus Ruth, David Wharton, Brooke White, and Malcolm White. 

Their work in this show is featured in a new book also entitled Places in the Land, to be available at this show. 

There will also be a special issue of The Southern Quarterly, the university's journal of Southern arts and culture, to mark the occasion, go here.  to mark this occasion.

In conjunction with these shows, distinguished Southern folklorist Dr. William R. Ferris will give a talk entitled “The South in Color: A Visual Journey,” on October 12th at 6 pm in Gonzales Auditorium. 

Ferris is a photographer and film maker and an expert in Southern studies, African American music, and folklore, who serves as the Joel R. Williamson Eminent Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

Ferris co-edited the massive Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. His most recent book, The South in Color: A Visual Journal, was published in 2016 by the University of North Carolina Press. 

Ferris’s films include “Mississippi Blues,” which was featured at the Cannes Film Festival. He has produced numerous sound recordings and hosted “Highway 61,” a weekly blues program on Mississippi Public Radio, for nearly a decade.

This sounds like a splendid series of events.  I can't make it, and I'm hoping someone who does will send me a full report.

Southern Photographers in the News -- Early Fall 2017

New Orleans-based photographer Deborah Luster (see image above) is one of 25 American artists to be awarded an Art of Change fellowship by the Ford Foundation.

The Art of Change fellowships "support visionary artists and cultural leaders in creating powerful works of art that help advance freedom, justice, and inclusion, and strengthen our democracy." 

Winston-Salem, NC-based photographer Aaron Canipe (see image above) has joined artists Diego Camposeco, Jing Niu, and Jina Valentine in a group show of work now up at the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park, NC, through the fall of 2017. 

The show is called “Melt with Ruth”: Visions of Home and Horizon in North Carolina, and, according to the folks at the Center, seeks to explore "notions of home, identity, geography, and sense of place in North Carolina." 

Pawley's Island, SC-based photographer Jeff Rich (see image above) has published his second book of photographs of Southern rivers, this one entitled Watershed: The Tennessee River, now out from Fall Line Press, go here.

Congratulations to all these fine shooters!

Click! begins in NC's Research Triangle

In my part of the South -- North Carolina's Research Triangle area -- the big photography event of the year is the CLICK! Triangle Photography Festival, which comes to us every October.

This is the sixth annual CLICK! Events take place across the Triangle, including Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill. 

And it's going on right now. For a preview of what's happening, check out this piece from Lenscratch, featuring Chapel Hill-based photographer Lori Vrba, interviewed by Aline Smithson. 

  For a full list of events, dates, and locations, go to the CLICK! website, here.

Brandon Thibodeaux is Having a Great 2017, and it's only October

Dallas-based photographer Brandon Thibodeaux (see image above) is definitely having a moment in his career as a Southern photographer. 

So much good stuff has been happening in Thibodeaux's professional life lately that I will probably miss something, but these things I know: 

Thibodeaux's book In that Land of Perfect Day is now available from Red Hook Editions, go here. 

His image from that body of work -- Choo Choo and His Bible, Alligator, MS, 2012 (see image above) -- was chosen as winner of the Paul Conlan Prize at the recent Slow Exposures Photography Festival in Concord, GA.

As a result, Thibodeaux will have a solo show of his work at next year's SlowEx Festival, coming up before you know it on September 20-23, 2018.

Thibodeaux and his work have also been the subject of a feature story in the Washington Post, go here. 

As well recognition as by Jeff Rich in his Eyes on the South series for the Oxford American, go here. 

He has also been profiled on the Its Nice That blog, go here.

And there may be even more to celebrate for Thibodeaux; will try to keep you posted. After all, it's only October.

Congratulations to Thibodeaux on all his accomplishments and recognitions. Well-deserved!