NEWS
RECENT/UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS + PUBLICATIONS:
(click links in bold or see blog entries below for more info)
Recent and Upcoming Exhibitions:
- Southern Belle Redux, The Do Good Fund, Columbus, GA (curated by Emily Rena Williams)
- New Orleans du Nuit, Second Story Gallery, New Orleans, LA (juried by David Joshua Jennings and Bruce “Sunpie” Barnes)
- As Pretty Does, University of Alabama Gallery, Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center, Tuscaloosa, AL (curated by Micah Mermilliod)
- Eyes on Wilson: The 11th Edition, Eyes on Main Street International Outdoor Street Photography Festival, Wilson, NC (curated by Jerome De Perlinghi)
Recent Select Publications:
- “In Idaho, a preview of RFK Jr.’s vaccine-skeptical America,” photographs for The Washington Post
- Visual Methods for Sensitive Images: Ethics and Reflexivity in Criminology On/Offline, published by Palgrave Macmillan
- “Being Better People: Drug Using Careers and Petyote” published in Justice Quarterly, the top-ranked criminology journal in the world
- New South published by Atlanta Center for Photography
- “What Has Been Will Be Again,” Southern Cultures
- “Slaying the vampire that is killing bats,” photographs for The Washington Post
- “Peyote as Earth Medicine: Examining How Symbolic Meanings Shape Experiences With Psychedelics” published in The British Journal of Criminology, featuring photographs from The Circle
- “Biden’s renewable energy goals blow up against a painful WWII legacy,” photographs for The Washington Post
- Reckonings & Reconstructions published by UGA Press
- “Sex, Drugs, and Coercive Control: Gendered Narratives of Methamphetamine Use, Relationships, and Violence” photo essay published in Criminology, the first ever of its kind for the flagship social science journal
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On Sunday, Oct. 18, I will be joined with my longtime collaborator, Cary Norton, in making wet-plate collodion tintypes during the 2025 Plein Air Invitational at William Faulkner’s old mule farm, Greenfield Farm, located just outside of Oxford, Miss. Cary and I are excited to debut a handbuilt 16x20 mammoth plate camera -- a camera that Cary has had in the works for nearly five years.
Participating artists include: Kaleena Stasiak, Catherine Jones, Jared Ragland, Rowan Haug, Joshua Brinlee, Stacy Rathert, Jingshuo Yang, Aubrey Pohl, Carlyle Wolfe; with a poetry reading by former Mississippi Poet Laureate Beth Ann Fennelly.
The Plein Air Invitational is a collaboration between the University of Mississippi and Mississippi State University, curated by Brooke P. Alexander & Caroline Hatfield, and is presented by Visit Oxford MS, the Yoknapatawpha Arts Council, and Greenfield Farm Writers Residency, a project of the Mississippi Lab at the University of Mississippi.
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Hello from my new home in Mississippi, where I’ve joined the faculty at the University of Mississippi and moved everything into this 100 year old shotgun house (well, mostly everything). The house originally came from a town called Alligator over in the Delta and was plunked down here a few decades ago, just a few miles south of Oxford and off the old road where Faulkner would run his horses and Bill Eggleston once drove his car into a ditch. Over yonder is a good swimming hole and out back is a fallow cotton field. Some nights the septuagenarian who lives in the farmhouse across the field will come by for a drink. She is a real spitfire and can put down more Bud heavies than an Sig Nu on Saturday night. We plan to walk to town for a piece of catfish soon. Meanwhile I just got off the wait list at the post office for a PO Box; no one here in this town of 300 keeps a regular mailbox. I got number 12 because one of the old timers died, I reckon.
Anyway, I couldn’t be more excited to join such a storied institution in such a storied place, with the charge of shepherding the transition of the photo program into a new era. But I’m also here simply because I want to be. “How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home,” Faulkner once wrote. After several years in the desert (literally and figuratively), this is the place where I'll make home, tend to an irreparably broken heart, and redouble my photographic work within a rich and familiar geography. At this point in life, fresh starts are few and far between. I’m grateful to have this one and to be home on this little postage stamp of native soil.
Y'all come visit.
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Delighted to share I have received a 2025 Mid-Career Artist Grant from the Center for Photographic Art. Selected by Nancy Burns, W.M. Hunt, and Frank Yamrus, the grant provides $5k in support my ongoing work in Alabama. Fellow grantees include Emergent Artist winner Nancy Rivera and Project Support winner David Emitt Adams.
The Center for Photographic Art was founded in 1988 to carry on the traditions of the illustrious Friends of Photography created by Ansel Adams, Cole and Brett Weston, Wynn Bullock, Nancy Newhall, Beaumont Newhall and a group of like-minded photographers.
The CPA has presented the same level of high-quality exhibitions, community events, educational engagement, and artist lectures as its predecessor, as well as expanded to create a variety of community collaborations, workshops, publications, juried contests and grant opportunities. With roots starting in 1967, the CPA remains the oldest, longest running, and one of the most prestigious photographic organizations on the west coast.
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Later this month I will be back on the road in Alabama to continue work on What Has Been Will Be Again through the generous support of a Brooklyn Darkroom artist residency.
Brooklyn Darkroom, a New York State 501(c)3, supports photographers by providing photography and travel resources and facilities for dedicated artist practitioners. The annual residency provides use of a fully equipped 2023 Winnebago Solis 59P pop-top camper for up to one month, a $4,000 stipend to cover travel, living, and materials expenses, and access to the Brooklyn Darkroom for development, printing, and finishing. Previous resident artists include noted photographers Trent Davis Bailey, Rose Marie Cromwell, Curran Hatleberg, Ian Kline, Andrew Lichtenstein, Irina Rozovsky, Mark Steinmetz, and Rachel Stern.
For my time in the camper, beginning in mid-May and continuing through mid-June, I’ll retrace the de Soto expedition and Old Federal Road through Alabama, also making stops in Mobile and Birmingham, spending time in the Sipsey Wilderness and Bankhead National Forest, and photographing through the small coal mining communities where my family originates.
Follow along via the Brooklyn Darkroom Instagram feed.
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