NEWS
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RECENT/UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS + PUBLICATIONS:
(click links in bold or see blog entries below for more info)
Recent and Upcoming Exhibitions:
- What Has Been Will Be Again, Foto Forum Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM
- What Has Been Will Be Again, Union Grove Gallery, University of Alabama in Huntsville, Huntsville, AL
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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WHAT HAS BEEN WILL BE AGAIN has received an Honorable Mention in the 2026 Michael P. Smith Fund for Documentary Photography. Organized by the New Orleans Photo Alliance, the MPS Fund was created to honor the life and work of Michael P. Smith, one of New Orleans’ most legendary and beloved documentary photographers.
The award was juried by Alyssa Ortega Coppelman, a photography consultant and photo editor based in Austin, Texas. Coppelman is the Art Editor at Oxford American magazine and freelance editor with Harper’s Magazine. She has also served as a senior photo editor for National Geographic and as Archival Producer for PBS NewsHour.
The MPS Fund is open to emerging and established photographers residing in the Gulf Coast states (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida and Georgia); the main criteria for selection is strength of the applicant’s portfolio and a written project statement, each demonstrating a commitment to a documentary project.
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'an unfixed pilgrimage' special edition
COMPOSIT Press is pleased to announce the publication of “an unfixed pilgrimage,” a collaborative monograph by Jared Ragland and Sara J. Winston. The book traces parallel journeys by artists whose lives—and practices—have been reshaped by relocation, loss, and the demands of a creative and academic life.
Ragland and Winston have known one another for 15 years, beginning when Winston was a student of Ragland's at the Corcoran College of Art + Design. Their relationship has since evolved into one of trusted friendship and artistic peerage. Several years ago, in order to put stakes in the ground for the mirage of job security in academia, both Ragland and Winston settled in regions they struggled to call home—Ragland in northern Utah, Winston in the Hudson River Valley. For Ragland it was an alien, and alienating, landscape, far from his native Alabama; for Winston it was familiar countryside, only 40 miles north of where she grew up, but seen anew through the altered consciousness of parenthood and chronic illness.
The work grew from “20-40-10," an assignment developed by Joe Cameron and Claudia Smigrod at the Corcoran. The exercise requires students to expose 20 rolls of film, produce 40 work prints, and complete 10 final prints within a prescribed period. In homage to their shared Corcoran roots, Ragland and Winston adopted the prompt and expanded it into a two-year collaborative investigation.
The photographs document an intimate and elegiac, yet unresolved, journey—embracing a sense of uncertainty that suggests the search for belonging is not found in a specific time or place but through the continued practice of attention, kinship, and care.
About the book: 9 x 11" 144 pages. An annotated photocopy of an excerpt from Wendell Berry's essay "The Unforeseen Wilderness" is stapled to the cover. Edition of 250.
Special Edition Box: 9.5 x 11.5" when closed, 33 x 11.5" when open. Box contains two foldout flaps: the left features a contact print, the right an archival pigment print. Eight boxes will feature prints by Ragland, eight by Winston. The book is housed in the center, situated above a well containing an exposed, yet undeveloped, roll of film by each artist. The original assignment sheet that inspired the work is attached to the front of the box. Edition of 16.
Available Feb. 2027. Pre-order via COMPOSIT Press.
Composit Press, housed in the Art Department of the School of Visual, Performing, and Design Arts at Oregon State University, is a student-staffed printing press and bindery. Within a curricular structure, students design, print, and bind publications with a photographic or art focus. Composit Press in run by Evan Baden, Senior Instructor of Photography and is funded by the sales of it’s Photobooks.
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WHAT HAS BEEN WILL BE AGAIN has received the 2026 Foto Forum Santa Fe Photography Award
and will be on view June 5-July 25. The sixth annual international competition was juried by Ray Potes of Hamburger Eyes and open to emerging and established artists.
Foto Forum Santa Fe is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that creates an artistic space to explore the current relationship between photography, storytelling, science, and technology through artist exhibitions, workshops, visiting artist lectures, research, and community outreach. The Photography Award expands upon Foto Forum’s commitment to showcasing both contemporary work from established artists and giving opportunities for emerging photographers to find an audience.
The exhibition will feature several new photographs, made with support of a 2025 Brooklyn Darkroom Residency and 2025 Center for Photographic Art Mid-Career Artist Grant.
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On Friday, March 20 I was joined by friend and collaborator Sara J. Winston in co-chairing a panel at the SPE national conference in Atlanta. An Unfixed Pilgrimage: Vulnerability, Kinship & Healing through Collaboration featured fellow photographers Rachel Boillot, Allison Grant, and J Carrier.
Panel Abstract: Photography is a medium well suited for dialog between artists, be it a place-based investigation to forge stronger mutual understanding, a visual exchange of images to spark dialogue, and/or creation of space to reflect on collective experiences. Photography gives us a common language, and power, to spark meaningful conversation. When photography is approached as a collaborative means to artmaking, it can be a catalyst for impactful change, discovery, and community building. Inspired by session chairs Jared Ragland and Sara J. Winston’s experiences of the important (and often absent) element of kinship in the medium, this session will focus on collaborative journeys and strategies that have yielded opportunities for transformative vulnerability, empathy, healing, and growth.
SPE is the leading forum for fostering understanding of photography in all its forms and related media. SPE engages its worldwide membership and affiliated communities through a range of supportive platforms including conferences, events, and publications.
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