Richard Sexton at Rebekah Jacob Gallery

We generally think of the American South as historically and culturally as well as physically connected to the rest of the United States.

But much of the coastal South also shares deep historical and cultural ties with lands and peoples to the east and south, among the islands of the Caribbean as well as in Central and South America.

New Orleans-based photographer Richard Sexton has a show opening May 20th, 2014 at Rebekah Jacobs Gallery in Charleston that reminds us of this fact.

Called Creole World: Photographs of New Orleans and the Latin Caribbean Sphere, this show uses chiefly images of architecture to demonstrate ties between cities like Wilmington, NC, Charleston, SC, Savannah, GA, and especially New Orleans and coastal cities in Ecuador, Argentina, Bolivia, Haiti, and particularly Cuba.

As Rebekah Jacob points out, all these places are "uniquely and historically connected . . . through the trade in cotton, indigo and slaves in the 19th century."

These port cities were founded as New World outposts of Old World empires. Their ties in the 18th and 19th centuries were more often with each other than they were with inland parts of their own countries.

 

Sexton brings strong compositional skills, an unerring eye for form, and an uncanny feeling for light to this work.  

Opening festivities for the show include a lecture by Sexton on Tuesday, May 20th at 6:00 pm, and a formal opening reception with the artist on Wednesday the 21st beginning at 5:30 pm, all at Rebehak Jacob Gallery, 502 Upper King St., in downtown Charleston.

 Sexton already has a book out featuring this portfolio of his work. You can learn more about the work, and the book, if you visit Sexton's website, here.

Rebekah Jacob has this show up through June 30th of this year. Clearly well worth a visit!