Eliot Dudik, Barbara Ciurej and Lindsay Lochman, Susan Kae Grant Named Best of Show at PhotoNOLA Portfolio Review

Each year, the reviewers at the PhotoNOLA Portfolio Reviews select the three strongest bodies of work they have seen among the seventy portfolios they've reviewed. 

This year, the winners include the following:
 
1st place went to Eliot Dudik (see image above).

2nd place went to the team of Barbara Ciurej and Lindsay Lochman (see image above).

3rd place went to Susan Kae Grant  (see image above).

Dudik, who is having a great 2014 in photography, earned the PhotoNOLA Review Prize, which includes a solo exhibition at the New Orleans Photo Alliance Gallery during next years' PhotoNOLA, a cash award of $1000, and a marketing consultation with Mary Virginia Swanson. 

2nd Place winners, Barbara Ciurej and Lindsay Lochman, and 3rd Place winner, Susan Kae Grant, earned the opportunity to have galleries of their work displayed on the PhotoNOLA website. 

In addition, all will be highlighted in a LensCulture feature article.

For the full list of photographers juried into the PhotoNOLA 2014 portfolio review, go here.

Jeff Rich takes in the Work at PhotoNOLA

Jeff Rich made it to New Orleans last week for PhotoNOLA, and filed a report on some of the highlights on his Eyes on the South blog for the Oxford American, here.

Rich especially singles out work by Baton Rouge-based photographer Jeremiah Ariaz (see image above), now on display at the Cole Pratt Gallery.

Rich also singles out tintypes by Kevin Kline and Bruce Schultz (see image above, which were on view for one day at a pop-up show at 809 Piety Street,  in New Orleans. For more information on this work, go here. 

Also on Rich's list is an installation at the Front Gallery featuring work by Lee Deigaard (see image above) from his "Crusher Run: exploring landscape a stone's throw from the interstate" portfolio.   

Finally, Rich was taken with the display of photo books curated by Tammy Mercure at the Press Street Gallery, and including books by a whole slew of folks (full list here), of whom Rich singles out Aaron Turner, David McCarty, Shawn Kelly, Tamara Reynolds, and Anne Conway Jennings for special notice.

Thanks to Jeff for this fine report, and for giving us stay-at-homes a taste of the riches of PhotoNOLA for 2014. 

David Simonton at the Framers Corner in Carrboro

Master North Carolina photographer David Simonton is having a show of his work at the Framers Corner, at 210 West Main St, Carrboro, NC, now up through December 31st, 2014. 

Simonton is a true master at finding the compelling image in the midst of the small town South. 

North Carolina is a state of small towns, and Simonton has found the place, the light, and the moment in dozens and dozens of them. 

Who knew, until Simonton taught us, that that bird house was right there, in just the right place, to turn a the back of a ramshackled cinder block building into a place of grace and beauty?

 

Or that Simonton would find that tree just there, in front of that truck, in that place, in that light, and with that sign on it at just that angle, to lead us in to contemplate the possibility of wonder in the midst of the truly mundane? 

Simonton teaches us to see, and see anew, everywhere he goes, which is a good reason to get over to Carrboro and check out his work. 

Tamara Reynolds in The Bitter Southerner

Beautiful work by Tamara Reynolds in the current edition of The Bitter Southerner, illustrating a story about Doug Seegers who is unknown in Nashville but a famous musician in Sweden.

Seegers is described as a busker whose "music has this Marvin Gaye-meets-Hank Williams-meets-Jimmy Webb-meets-Ray Charles thing happening."

The story is about the cold November rain, in Southern streets, down and out, and its about redemption, too.

Thanks to Reynolds for bringing us the look of that street in the rain, and the face and hands of Doug Seegers. And to the Bitter Southerner for bringing us Reynolds work, and Max Blau's work, and the story and the sound of Seegers and his work.

Bitter or not, that's the South.  As my father used to say, "Now, don't that beat all." 

Betty Press is Having a Splendid 2014 -- and It's Not Over Yet!

Hattiesburg, MS-based photographer Betty Press is having an outstanding 2014.

Press is one of eight Southern photographers selected by juror Richard McCabe, Curator of Photography at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, for inclusion in this year's edition of the annual Atlanta Photography Group's Portfolio Show, now up at the APG Galleries through February 1st, 2015.

Press has also recently been the featured photographer on the Lenscratch blog, here, also featured twice on the Creek Royalty blog, here and here, and in the Eyes on the South, here.

She has had work in the SlowExposures show, the Ain't Bad Magazine show at the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta, GA, the Cedars Juried Show in Jackson, MS, and the Plastic Camera show in San Francisco.

Press brings to her work in Mississippi the experience of having lived and photographed in Africa for many years, resulting in a book published in 2011 entitled I Am Because We Are.

So Press went from photographing in Africa to photographing in the Mississippi Delta, one of the major centers for the people and culture of the African diaspora. 

Press says she never expected to be living and working in Mississippi, but that she brings "a singular perspective to portraying the Southern experience, black and white, which is so intertwined, and keeps the South a unique region in our country."

After several years of living in Mississippi but not feeling fully at home there, Press says she set out "to deal with the uneasiness by exploring the state, still largely rural and agricultural, through a series of road trips."

Her work "reveals a slightly surreal, hidden narrative of Mississippi’s landscape and the indomitable spirit of the people—sometimes fanciful, humorous, quirky, mysterious, and at times disturbing."

I had the great good fortune to meet Press at the ACP Portfolio Review this past October.

Her work stood out as exceptionally well-seen and well-recorded, especially through her use of toy and plastic cameras, whose distortions, vignetting, and irregularities of focus help Press to engage our attention, drawing us in to recognize and appreciate the details of lives we take for granted or find too ordinary to appreciate.

Press does fine work. Its good to see her get the kinds of recognition she so richly deserves.

For the record, the list of those in the Portfolio Show in Atlanta also includes Dennis Church, whom we devoted a blog entry to when his work appeared in Eyes on the South, as well as Justin Andre Cordova, Teri Darnell, Laura Noel, Lissette Schaeffler, Jerry Siegel, and Laine Wyatt.