Honorary Southern Photographer Carrie Mae Weems (see image above) is having a major show of her work in Durham, NC, made possible by Duke University's Nasher Museum. Weems' work is visible all over Durham, on billboards in a lot of locations.  Marshall Price, the Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger Curator of modern and contemporary art at the Nasher explains:  “It kind of fell in our laps,” he says. Artist and MacArthur grant-winner Carrie Mae Weems, a Black woman whose art is in the Nasher’s collection and who has collaborated before with the museum, had created an outd ..read more

  LensCulture has released the results of its annual art photography competition.   In first place in the Series Competition is a set of images (see image above) by Richmond, VA-based photographer Susan Worsham, from her Bittersweet on Bostwick Lane portfolio.   In first place in the Individual Image competition is "The Clouds Whispered Your Name" (see image above) by Washington DC-based photographer Tavon Taylor. There was clearly something about subjects shirtless and lying down that appealed to this year's jurors. Fine work, though!      Among photographs ..read more

  Grace Elizabeth Hale, who is the Commonwealth Professor of American Studies and History at the University of Virginia, has written a first-class article entitled "Photograph as History in the US South," in Southern Cultures, the quarterly publication of the Center for the Study of the American South, at UNC-Chapel Hill.   Hale points out that while "We understand the South as a major site of U.S. history, a landscape littered with evidence of the past, from plantation slavery and the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement. What fewer people know is that the region is also an ..read more

Honorary Southern Photographer Dawoud Bey has been named "One of the Greats" by the New York Times, go here.  The Times celebrates Bey and four other contemporary artists as "talents who, in mastering their crafts, have changed their fields — and the culture at large." Bey is celebrated in the essay as an artist who "In the seemingly simple gesture of photographing Black subjects in everyday life, . . .  helped to introduce Blackness in the context of fine art long before it was trendy, or even accepted."  This celebration of Bey's singular achievement in his career so far fol ..read more

The distinguished photographer Robert Frank has died at the age of 94.  For the New York Times obituary, go here. For the Washington Post, go here. For the Guardian, go here. Frank's early images, published in his landmark book The Americans, helped shape generations of photographic work in the American South, both in terms of technique, style, and subject matter.  Only the work of Depression-era photographers like Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Marion Post Wolcott rivals Frank's in this regard. The International Center of Photography's website has a helpful overview of Frank's ..read more

  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 ..read more

  There is a very fine article on the history of photography, and the history of the South,  available from the fine journal Southern Cultures, here. The title of the article is "Photography as History in the U.S. South," and the author is Grace Elizabeth Hale, who is Commonwealth Professor of American Studies and History at the University of Virginia and a 2018–2019 Carnegie Fellow. She says, of her subject: "We understand the South as a major site of U.S. history, a landscape littered with evidence of the past, from plantation slavery and the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement.  "What f ..read more

In the words of Paul Simon, "I have reason to believe we all shall be received in Graceland."*  Best wishes for a joyous Holiday season to Southern photographers and Southern photography fans everywhere.  The Southern Photographer will now take a short break from chronicling Fine Art Photography in the American South while your humble blogger attends to other professional and personal responsibilities. Thank you for your interest in The Southern Photographer, and especially for your kind words of support for this blog during the past year.  We look forward to resuming our chronic ..read more