64 Parishes

Fall 2018

Southern Realities on Display in New Photography Exhibit

A new exhibition at Ogden samples the rich and diverse range of photography being practiced in the American South today

Published: August 28, 2018
Last Updated: January 8, 2019

Southern Realities on Display in New Photography Exhibit

Courtesy of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art

Nancy Newberry, Smoke Bombs and Border Crossings, 2016, pigment print.

It could be argued that photography has been the American South’s greatest contribution to twentieth-century art. Southern photographers such as William Christenberry, Sally Mann, and William Eggleston are international art superstars who pioneered the “Southernization” of the contemporary global photographic aesthetic. Following the trajectory of these artists, New Southern Photography looks at the photographic innovators who are presently influencing the visualization of the American South to a global audience.

The goal of New Southern Photography is to present a sample of the rich and diverse range of photography being practiced in the American South today. The exhibition will feature the work of twenty-five emerging, mid-career, and established contemporary photographers and filmmakers. All exhibited work has been made in the last ten years, and all types of lens-formed imagery will be included, from tradition analog and digital still photography to film and video installations.

This exhibition seeks to highlight that, although the technology of photography has changed, the way photographs are viewed have changed, and the way photographs are disseminated have changed, the Southern tradition—and craft—of storytelling remains the same.

Regional identity in a global world is at the core of the exhibition’s narrative. Themes and concepts addressed in New Southern Photography include the experience of place in the American South; cultural mythology and reality; deep familial connections to the land; racial, cultural, and sexual identity; and the tension between the past and present.

New Southern Photography will create a space for conversation about the region. The exhibition will not only highlight recent contributions the American South has made to the world through photography but also serve as a platform to reinforce the Ogden Museum’s mission to broaden the knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of the American South.

Photographers included in the exhibition are David Emitt Adams, Kael Alford, Elizabeth Bick, Christa Blackwood, John Chiara, Scott Dalton, Joshua Gibson, Maury Gortemiller, Alex Grabiec, Aaron Hardin, Courtney Johnson, Tommy Kha, Brittany Lauback, Carl Martin, Jonathan Traviesa & Cristina Molina, Andrew Moore, Celestia Morgan, Nancy Newberry, RaMell Ross, Whitten Sabbatini, Jared Soares, Louviere + Vanessa, and Susan Worsham.

Each photographer will be individually showcased with a monographic installation focusing on a single body of work within the context of a group exhibition. New Southern Photography is a largest photography exhibition ever organized by the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. A full color catalogue of the exhibition will be published by University of New Orleans Press with essays by  Richard McCabe, Curator of Photography, Bradley Sumrall, Curator of Collections, and L. Kasimu Harris, writer and photographer.

New Southern Photography opens October 6, 2018–March 10, 2019, and is being curated by Richard McCabe, Curator of Photography, Ogden Museum of Southern Art.

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