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Sometimes, the search for new work in Southern photography takes me far from home. But sometimes, with help from my friends, I find it right around the corner.
My friend Raleigh-based photographer David Simonton introduced me this week the work of Adam Bellefeuil (see images above and below).
Bellefeuil is a Raleigh-based photographer who, like
Simonton, likes to photograph in small North Carolina towns and rural areas, and
especially, but not exclusively, after dark.
That's a good time and place to be when one's goal is to get a sense into one's work both of the timelessness and of the constantly changing character of Southern landscape.
Bellefeuil, whose work has also been featured in the ezine BOOOOOOOM, here, is certainly a Southern Photographer We Are Getting to Know.
The same day I was introduced to the work of Bellefeuil, I was also introduced to the work of Ken Abbott (see image directly above, and also below) by his friend Belle Boggs, who is also my colleague at NC State.
Abbott is an Asheville, NC-based photographer who has just published a book Useful Work: Photographs of Hickory Nut Gap Farm, available here or you know where.
Abbot's images from this portfolio have been featured recently on the Ain't Bad photo blog, here.
Abbott has been working on this project for over a decade. His subject is Hickory Nut Gap Farm, in existence for over a hundred and fifty years, near Asheville in Western North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains.
Hickory Nut Gap Farm was once known as Sherrill’s Inn, and in the late 1800s it was a busy stagecoach stop on an old trade route out of the southern Appalachian Mountains.
Since then, it has been at various times a religious community and a working farm, and it continues to be a vibrant part of Appalachian life.
Alex Harris,of Duke University's Center for Documentary
Studies, describes Abbott's work as "a marriage made in heaven, or
about as close as we get to heaven here in the Blue Ridge Mountains in
western North Carolina.
"In Useful Work, Ken Abbott so thoroughly and beautifully depicts
the surface and soul of this home and farm, that he reminds us how the
best photographers can focus on something seemingly small, yet evoke our
common humanity.
"This book represents an extraordinary achievement in
life and in art."
All true, that, and congratulations to Abbott, and to Bellefeuil, for adding to the illustrious history of photography in and of North Carolina, in the American South.
PhotoNOLA, the last major Southern photography festival of 2015, opens this week in New Orleans and runs through December 13th, 2015.
The folks at PhotoNOLA always organize a rich array of events, exhibitions, and speakers, and somehow get so much done in a very short period of time.
The full Calendar of Events is here. The list of affiliated exhibitions is here.
There look to be a number of fine shows of photography now up for PhotoNOLA.
The list is way too long to mention all of them.
Perhaps the most important of these for us is the show of work by Eliot Dudik at the New Orleans Photo Alliance Gallery, now up through February 14, 2016.
This show features work from Dudik's Broken Land and Still Lives portfolios.
This show is especially important because Dudik won the PhotoNOLA Review Prize during the 2014 PhotoNOLA; this show is part of Dudik's award.
Dudik's work addresses directly the traces of the Civil War as etched across the landscape of America and of the American South.
His Broken Land images show us how the landscapes of Civil War battlefields look today, still fractured by memory and by the ways now-ancient divisions persist in our society.
His Still Lives work documents the continuing struggle to understand the Civil War, to be found in the faces of Civil War reenactors, here seen reenacting the deaths of those whose actions these folks struggle to keep alive in our time.
Reviewer Roy Flukinger, of the Harry Ransom Center, had this to say about Dudik's work:
Dudik has, Flukinger writes, "brought to bear on these Civil War battlefield
landscapes, as well as both the ghosts of reenactors and the
transformations of man and nature" a "panoramic" vision.
Flukingeer continues, "While his sense of scale and
color add to the elegant vitality of his prints, it is primarily [Dudik's] sense of human history and the ceaseless cogency of time itself that
make" his work so powerful and compelling.
Congratulations to all the folks who bring us PhotoNOLA, and to Dudik, who helps us understand the division that runs through Southern history and culture.
As Leonard Cohen once wrote, "There is a crack in everything, a crack that lets the light get in." Dudik's work helps us see the crack; his vision helps us notice the light.
Or, at least, one can hope, in this season of expectation.
Something new this year from The Southern Photographer.
We've never tried this before, but here goes. For holiday giving, by all means, buy local.
But in a sense everything is local in the South, and if you do want to broaden your shopping horizons, here are some sources for photography-related gear and accessories.
If you have suggestions for sites to add to this list of resources for holiday giving, please send them to me and I will include them in this list.
Check out the following:
For camera gear, KEH Camera is our regional (if not local) major gear supplier, providing, as they say, The Smarter Way to Buy and Sell your gear.
Nancy McCrary has lots of Southern photography goodies for your consideration at the SxSE Shop, now open here.
The General Store at the Bitter Southerner has some nifty stuff, some of it photography-related.
For the Southern Photographer who has always wanted to be a Magnum photographer, Magnum Photos is selling marked-up contact sheets from such distinguished members of Magnum as Martin Parr, Eliot Erwitt, and Philippe Halsman, go here.
And for the Southern Photographer Who Has Everything, and who has been Especially Good, there is of course the ultimate present, William Eggleston's The Democratic Forest, a ten-volume set of books containing more than 1,000 photographs Eggleston made in the 1980's.
Eggleston's images included in these 10 volumes range from work made in Louisiana to Boston, through cities and small towns, cotton fields, and Civil War battlefields.
According to the publisher, the "democratic"
in Eggleston's title refers to a democracy of vision, through which the
most mundane subjects are represented with the same complexity and
significance as the most elevated.
Only $600 a set from your local bookstore, or a tiny bit less from You Know Who.
I'm hoping for more input, and if you help me, there is more to come.
Lets hear from folks!
EYES ON THE SOUTH
Each week, Rich brings us us work by an exceptional Southern photographer.
As Rich does this, he demonstrates a fine and discriminating eye for Southern photography.
Rich also demonstrates remarkable persistence in maintaining this challenging schedule while meeting all his other responsibilities as an artist and a professor in the School of Art and Art History at the University of Iowa.
Jeff says he is always on the lookout for new work, and you can submit yours at oa.eyesonthesouth@gmail.com.
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