Jeff Rich is a photographer based in Pawleys Island, South Carolina. Jeff currently teaches photography at Coastal Carolina University. He curates the OA’s weekly photo series, Eyes on the South.
An installment in our weekly photography series, Eyes on the South
Eyes on the South curator Jeff Rich interviewed artist Alex Harris, whose series Our Strange New Land is the High Museum’s most recent Picturing the South commission. They were joined by the associate curator of photography at the museum, Gregory Harris, who worked closely with Alex on the exhibition.
In anticipation of their annual gathering next month, we’ve partnered with SlowExposures, a “juried exhibition celebrating photography of the rural American South,” to curate this special edition of Eyes on the South.
A selection of works from the Do Good Fund collection, promoting the excellence and diversity of contemporary Southern photography.
This series by Blake Burton documents the rehabilitation of one of Atlanta’s most historic buildings: the Sears, Roebuck & Company building in the city’s Old Fourth Ward neighborhood, which reopened last year as the Ponce City Market.
The Mountain Stands Still by Elle Olivia Andersen observes the life of a man named Robert, who is deeply attached to his isolated mountain home. The photographs explore his identity within the Southern landscape and encourage viewers to investigate their own place in the world.
In the series Memorial Water, Maury Gortemiller blends the familiar of everyday scenes into the surreal plane of memory. Whether photographing candidly or staging and digitally altering the shots, Gortemiller focuses on moments in one’s personal history that are just beyond clear recollection.
Tired of Being Tired, by Ari Gabel, focuses on people of the Mississippi Delta. Inspired by his love for the delta blues, Gabel traveled throughout the region searching for the source of this powerful genre of American music.
These photographs by Rusty Miller, taken in the 1960s and ’70s, feature Atlanta’s Summerhill, Old Fourth Ward, and Vine City neighborhoods as well as the MARTA bus line. A careful and intense observer, Miller is known for his often candid and striking images of his subjects.
All the Place You’ve Got by Cate Colvin Sampson explores the communities of the vanishing South Louisiana hinterlands. The series is inspired by the conservationist writings of Wendell Berry and Mike Tidwell.
The series Plateau by Aaron Canipe examines North Carolina’s Piedmont region. Inspiration for the series comes from Thomas Wolfe’s novella The Lost Boy: “ . . . the earth’s pivot, the granite core of changelessness, the eternal place where all things came and passed, and yet abode forever and would never change.”