Southern Photographers on the Web, Late Spring 2016

The World Wide Web has become a significant display medium for photographers. 

Southern photographers recently singled out for celebration on the Web include the following:

  1. Winston-Salem, NC-based photographer Heather Evans Smith (see image above), in the New York Times, for the "quiet yet telling images" from her Seen Not Heard portfolio. 

2.  Distinguished Southern photographer Burk Uzzle (see image above), also in the New York Times, for his capability for "being in the right place at the right time" to make "pictures that capture the humanity in historical moments." 

 

3.  Raleigh-based photographer Diana Hooper Bloomfield (see image above) the On-Line Featured Artist at the moment for the VERVE GALLERY of Contemporary Photography, go here.
 

Bloomfield has also been the Featured Photographer recently on Rfotofolio (see image from that show directly above).

4. Savannah, GA-based photographer Fred Hirschman (see image above) is featured in AINT-BAD Magazine, here.

Photographers featured in Jeff Rich's ongoing Eyes on the South for the Oxford American include the following:

5. Oxford, MS-based photographer Shaun H. Kelly (see image above), with work from his Overgrown South portfolio. 

 
6. Lauren Henkin (see image above), with work from her what's found is yours to keep portfolio.  

7. Washington, DC-based photographer Grant Ellis (see image above), with work from his portfolio Bless your Heart. 

8. Western NC-based photographer Ken Abbott (see image above), with work from his portfolio Useful Work: Photographs of Hickory Nut Gap Farm.

9. Orlando, Florida-based photographer M. Laine Wyatt (see image above), with work from her Interiors portfolio. Wyatt was also featured by Aline Smithson on Lenscratch last year, go here.

10. Colleen Mullins (see image above), with images of post-Katrina New Orleans from her Elysium portfolio. 

Congratulations to all these fine photographers!

More to come -- keep watching this space. 

Deadline for Slow Exposures Fast Approaching

Slow Exposures, the annual photography show about the Rural South, will be held this September 15 - 18 in Pike County, Georgia.

There is still time to get your work into Chris and all the good folks in Pike County. The deadline for entries is midnight on Sunday, June 19th, 2016. 

This year's jurors are David Carol and Eliot Dudik. 

This year, for the first time, the entire show will move to the Cochran Gallery in LaGrange, Georgia, where it will be up for a longer time than is possible in the exhibit areas in Pike County. 

Slow Exposures is one of the truly great events in the world of Southern photography, so its time to get your work together and send it on in for this year's show.
 

Lori Vrba at the Southeast Center for Photography

Chapel Hill-based photographer Lori Vrba has a major show of work from her Portal portfolio now up at Greenville, SC's Southeast Center for Photography, in their exhibition space downtown, at 1239 Pendleton Street. 

Vrba's show is up through August 27th, and has already begun to receive wide and enthusiastically positive notice, including this feature interview by Aline Smithson in Lenscratch and this feature story in Rfotofolio.

Vrba is a master of vision, and of realizing her vision in the darkroom and in the spaces she commands for installations of her work. Art, in her view, is a matter both of finely-made objects and of the settings in which she locates them. 

Happily, to give us an idea of what she has in store for us, Vrba has posted a video of the show on Vimeo, here:

https://vimeo.com/169367681

Vrba speaks of this portfolio as involving a journey both outward and inward, or as she puts it, "Portal is about the entry point into a world that is exotic, mystical, spiritual and maybe even a little bit dangerous.  (Or in other words…The South).  

"As I’ve gone deeper into the work, I’ve realized that the portal could lead inward as well; to an internal place of essence, magic, grace and fortitude."

This Portal show is definitely worth your trip to Greenville. Congratulations to Vrba on yet another fine body of work, and yet another compelling installation!

William Eggleston now represented in NYC by the Zwirner Gallery

The New York Times brings news that Distinguished Southern Photographer William Eggleston is now represented in New York City by the David Zwirner Gallery, at 525 W 19th Street. 

The press release announcing this move is here.  

Zwirner's first event featuring Eggleston's work will be a show at the West 20th Street location of the Zwirner Gallery of work from Eggleston's Democratic Forest portfolio.

Eggleston was previously represented in The Big Apple by Larry Gagosian, who still lists Eggleson as one of his artists, go here.

The New York Times quotes Zwirner to the effect that "the photo community sometimes takes their own and holds them hostage," but "it's important for Eggleston's work to be seen among the great art that's being made. I know that's very important for him in choosing our gallery."  

This seems to be An Event in the art world of NYC, go here for the story from ArtNet, and here for the story from The Observer.

ArtNet says that "Eggleston's decision to leave Gagosian comes hot on the heels of Julian Schnabel quitting Gagosian to return to Pace Gallery, on the grounds that he "wanted to have a more human relationship with the person who was representing my work."

ArtNet concludes that Eggleston's move "seems to be becoming quite a trend, as in 2012, Yayoi Kusama also left Gagosian for Zwirner.

"Eggleston, Kusama, and Schnabel are not the only artists to crave a less business-like approach from the mega-gallery Gagosian, which has and continues to expand across the globe."

Ah, yes, the NYC Gallery scene, a form of art consumption that I neither have access to, nor understand. 

Look3 photography Festival opening June 13th in Charlottesville, Virginia

Mary Virginia Swanson and all the good folks who bring us the Look3 Festival of Photography are looking forward to welcoming us to Charlottesville, Virginia for this year's Festival, opening June 13th and running through the 19th. 

For more information on this year's Festival, including speakers, events, and tickets, go here.

The mission of Look3, they tell us, is to "celebrate the vision of extraordinary photographers, ignite conversations about critical issues, and foster the next generation of artists." 

And so they do, and in the process turn the downtown area of Charlottesville, Virginia, into a true wall-to-wall celebration of photography.

In fact, I'm reliably informed that the exhibitions of photography in the street are already up for this year's festival. 

To get a glimpse of what awaits you in Charlottesville, at Look3, go here:

http://www.nbc29.com/story/32092471/photography-festival-installs-pictures-on-downtown-mall

And while you are in Charlottesville, if you want to eat at the best Italian restaurant in the USA south of NYC, check out Tavola on Hinton Avenue.

Just sayin'.