2015

EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALL RIGHT

A meditation on the Walker Percy novel, The Moviegoer


“All these years I have been assuming that between us words mean roughly the same thing, that among certain people, gentlefolk I don’t mind calling them, there exists a set of meanings held in common.”

– Walker Percy, The Moviegoer

In Everything is Going to Be All Right, both traditionally made black and white photographs and digitally sourced appropriated imagery are combined to produce a meditation on Walker Percy’s 1961 novel, The Moviegoer. Made in New Orleans (where the story is set) and largely shot at night, the photographs loosely document a dispossessed urban landscape, particularly the approximate locations of single screen movie theaters that once ubiquitously populated the city. After photographing these locations, I input the theaters’ names – ones like The Tiger, The Cortez, Dreamland, and The Gaiety – into Google image search to create a database of images that shares the landscape photographs’ melancholic tones. The result is a body of work that aims to simultaneously address the plurality of symbolic functions and describe my own personal search for meaning amid feelings of loss, isolation, alienation, and malaise.

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Select Exhibitions:
  • The Front, New Orleans, LA, 2018 (solo)
  • Viar-Christ Center for the Arts, Hampden-Sydney College, Hampden-Sydney, VA, 2018 (solo)
  • Contemporary Alabama Photography, traveling: Contemporary Art Gallery, Houston Baptist University, Houston, TX, 2018; Mobile Museum of Art, Mobile, AL, 2017 (curated by Richard McCabe)
  • Candela Books + Gallery, Richmond, VA, 2017 (solo)
  • Convergys Gallery, Art Academy Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH Cochran Gallery, LaGrange, GA, 2015 (solo)
  • Cochran Gallery, LaGrange, GA, 2015 (solo)
  • Friday 13th, Good Children Gallery, New Orleans, LA, 2013

Publications/Press:

  • Efrem Zelony-Mindell. Primal Sight. Gnomic Book, 2021.
  • “Eyes on the South: The Moviegoer,” Oxford American
  • Efrem Zelony-Mindell. “Primal Sight.” Dear Dave, 26, February 2018
  • “Jared Ragland Tributes Walker Percy’s ‘The Moviegoer.’” FotoRoom
  • Caitlin Peterson. “Jared Ragland: States Project: Alabama.” Lenscratch, November 2015 
  • Romke Hoogwaerts. “Jared Ragland, Everything Is Going To Be All Right.” MOSSfull, November 2015
  • Max Marshall. “Wed: Jared Ragland.” The Latent Image, July 2016.
  • Sean H. Kelley. “A Brief Interview with Jared Ragland.” Strant Magazine 

Awards:
  • Wort im Bild (Words in Images) International Photo Competition, Third Place

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Select Works:



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Installation:


Everything Is Going To Be All Right, Viar-Christ Center for the Arts, Hampden-Sydney College, February 2018. Arranged as an allusion to the Isenheim Altarpiece, the installation converted the gallery into a small chapel. 



Everything Is Going To Be All Right, Candela Books + Gallery, May 5–June 24, 2017



Everything Is Going To Be All Right, Candela Books + Gallery, May 5–June 24, 2017



Everything Is Going To Be All Right, Candela Books + Gallery, May 5–June 24, 2017


Everything Is Going To Be All Right, Candela Books + Gallery, May 5–June 24, 2017


Contemporary Alabama Photography, Mobile Museum of Art, March 10–Aug. 27, 2017 (curated by Richard McCabe)



Contemporary Alabama Photography, Mobile Museum of Art, March 10–Aug. 27, 2017 (curated by Richard McCabe)



Everything Is Going To Be All Right, Convergys Gallery, Art Academy Cincinnati, Nov. 6–Dec. 12, 2015



Everything Is Going To Be All Right, Convergys Gallery, Art Academy Cincinnati, Nov. 6–Dec. 12, 2015



Everything Is Going To Be All Right, Convergys Gallery, Art Academy Cincinnati, Nov. 6–Dec. 12, 2015


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