SOUTHBOUND now in Raleigh and Durham through December 2019

SOUTHBOUND, The epic show of contemporary Southern photography, is opening this month in North Carolina, at two venues. 

Part of the show opens on September 5th, with a reception between 6-8 pm, at the Gregg Museum of Art + Design in Raleigh, off Hillsborough Street, on the campus of NC State University.

The other part of the show opens the next day, September 6th, with a reception between 6-9 pm at the Power Plant Gallery, in downtown Durham, in the American Tobacco Campus near the Durham Bulls Athletic Park.

Both venues will have this work on display through December 2019. 



The full title of this show is Southbound: Photographs of and about the New South. The show was originally put together by Mark Sloan and Mark Long of the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston School of the Arts.

The show includes images by fifty-six photographers now either living or working in the South. According to the organizers, the show seeks to explore "the storied, charged, and enduring place that we call the South."

This show is not to be missed. The large number of photographers with work on view, as well as the range and diversity of their visions of the South, make this show as complete and as thorough an envisioning of the South as we are likely to get for some time to come. 

One could easily think of others whose work is as deserving of inclusion as the work included here, but that is the case, regardless of how large the show might be. Such is the happy state of photography in the American South in this second decade of the 21st century. 

The show was up in Charleston last year, and now travels to North Carolina, where it has been rearranged by author and North Carolina native Randall Kenan into two separate but related interrelated exhibitions: Flux: Nostalgia vs. the Future, on view at the Power House in Durham, and Home: How We Make Ourselves, on view at the Gregg Museum of Art + Design at NC State University. 
 

The organizers of this rendition say the purpose of the show is "to engage with the South through the eyes and minds of fine art and documentary photographers working in the region since the year 2000, a time when, for all the overlapping processes of economic, demographic, social, and cultural change, it makes sense to think about a New South. 

"The photographs that result from the artists’ sustained thinking about, looking at, and discovery of the multifaceted and startling New South speak to the history, complexity, and ongoing transformation of the region. 

"The images represent the photographers’ own considered responses to their chosen environ­ments–no photographs were commissioned for the project. The Southbound photographs provide the viewer with shifting pathways to moments of unbridled joy and deep frustration, and, ultimately, to an understanding, however fleeting, of this place.

"While the South represents too many things to too many people ever to be condensed into any one medium–literary, cartographic, scholarly, or photographic–Southbound opens windows onto the region. The photographs presented here underscore the resilience of the South even as they reveal it as a place remade, once again, in the early twenty-first century."

To learn more about this show, go to the Southbound website, southboundproject.org, which serves as an archive for the show and includes all the 550 images from the fifty-six participating artists.

There are also lots of ancillary events going on while this work is on view in Raleigh and Durham. For a calendar of the events in Durham, go here to the events page for the Power Plant Gallery. Events held at the Gregg Museum can be found on the Gregg's website.

Click here to download a pdf copy of the works on view at the Power Plant Gallery.
Click here to download a pdf copy of the works on view at the Gregg.

And make your plans to see SOUTHBOUND at these two venues. This is the REAL DEAL, the BIG DEAL, the REALLY IMPORTANT show you must see if you care anything at all about the quality of photography in the American South today.

SOUTHBOUND -- Upcoming at Charleston's Halsey Institute

Mark your calendars now for October 19th, 2018, to attend the opening of SOUTHBOUND: Photographs of and about the New South, at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art and the City Gallery at Waterfront Park, in downtown Charleston.

This will be an exceptional -- and exceptionally important -- group show, featuring the work of 56 photographers who are either Southerners or who have had, in the words of the show's organizers, "a sustained engagement with the South."  

Each of the photographers will be represented by four photographs, for a total of 220 photographs in the joint show. 

The goal of this show, according to co-curators Mark Sloan and Mark Long, is "to engage with and unsettle assumed narratives about this contested region by providing fresh perspectives for understanding the complex admixture of history, geography, and culture that constitutes today’s New South."

Sloan, the Director of the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, and Long, a professor of political science at the College of Charleston, envision this show as embracing "the conundrum of its name."  

They go on: "To be southbound is to journey to a place in flux, radically transformed over recent decades, yet also to the place where the past resonates most insistently in the United States. To be southbound is also to confront the weight of preconceived notions about this place, thick with stereotypes, encoded in the artistic, literary, and media records." 

They suggest the scope of their plans and the range of their ambition, thus:

"The history of the American South is among the most storied of any region in the world. As a result of the vitality of its culture and the diversity of its inhabitants—to say nothing about the salience of photography in the U.S.—the region has also come to be among the most photographed. 

"Through the exhibition, video, remappings, website, and catalogue—separately and in tandem—the Southbound project charts new courses to expanded imaginings for the twenty-first century South."

There are so many aspects to this show -- and it is so important -- that I'll need several blog posts to cover all the details. 

For now, however, please note that you can find out more about the show here. A list of all the photographers is here. Plans for the show's catalogue is here.

If you go here and scroll down until you see the heading Exhibition Prospectus, you can find more details about the show, including your opportunities for supporting the show, and the overall project. 

These opportunities include the chance to receive a print of an image by four of the show's photographers, or to schedule a personal portrait shoot with Atlanta's master portraitist Jerry Siegel.

This show will travel after its run in Charleston concludes in March of 2019. If you have influence with a gallery or museum or other exhibition space, go here as well to learn about how to book it.

I'm happy to say that the first sites for the show after Charleston include NC State University's own Gregg Museum of Art and Design, here in Raleigh, and Duke University's Power Plant Gallery, in Durham, sites that will share the show from September 5th - December 29th, 2019.

Southbound in Charleston

The Halsey Institute has on exhibit at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art and City Gallery at Waterfront Park, both in Charleston, SC, a new and exceptional show of Southern photography called SOUTHBOUND: Photographs of and about the New South, through March 2nd, 2019.

This show is a major landmark in contemporary Southern photography, featuring the work of 56 of the best photographers working in the South today (including Durham's Titus Brooks Heagins, see image above), all of whom contribute to the project's overall goal of "offering a composite image of this storied region." 

The work on offer in this show includes photographs that reveal the South as "a bastion of tradition, as a region remade through Americanization and globalization, and as a land full of surprising realities."

I had the chance to meet Mark Sloan and Mark Long a while back, and their enthusiasm for this project was extraordinary. The show they have assembled justifies fully their enthusiasm. 

This show is not to be missed. The good news is that once it comes down in Charleston, it will move to other places. We'll keep you informed about its stops along the way. 

In the meantime, seek out the massive catalogue of the show, now available here. 

You can also check out the show's own website, here. 

On the website, don't miss the MAP OF SOUTHERNNESS, here. 

Also check out the feature story about this show from TIME, here. 

And, whatever you do, if you practice or care about photography in the American South, you have to see this show. 

You really do.

SOUTHBOUND: Photographs of and about the New South, the show now up at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in Charleston, SC, has received appreciative coverage from the New York Times, go here.

The Times story features a number of images from this show, including Blizz and Brooke by Jares Soares (see image above). 

The story argues that "Accepting the South for what it is, instead of what we imagine it to be, is not easy. “I think that if you were to Google ‘Southern photography,’ you’re going to come up with the images of a rusted pickup truck in a field,” Richard McCabe said. “But the South is as much Houston as it is the Mississippi Delta. I think what we don’t realize is the place is just as connected as everywhere else.”

It goes on: “New Southern Photography” . . .  challenges the outdated assumption that the South is disconnected and isolated. Many people have tried to create a new visual language for the South, only to fail because they’d presumed there was a singular, representational way to do that. Mr. McCabe, who is the museum’s curator of photography, didn’t make the same mistake.

“‘New Southern Photography’ is not intended to define the South,” Mr. McCabe wrote in the exhibit’s catalog, “but rather to create an open discussion.”

And so it will.  

The Times article also brings to my attention a new book by historian Scott L. Matthews, “Capturing the South: Imagining America’s Most Documented Region,” which examines documentary work of the South throughout the 20th century.

Matthews is quoted in the Times piece as arguing “that as early as the 19th century, portions of the South — particularly the rural South and what was almost considered the West at that time, but what we would now think of the Deep South — became this frontier culture that stood in stark contrast to the rapidly-modernizing cities of eastern America, that were not only becoming industrialized, but beginning to experience rapid immigration from Europe.”  The South remained true to itself while “emerging markets were standardizing the rest of America. 

 This book will be on my wish list for Christmas, for sure.