In 2005, American photojournalist Kael Alford, exhausted from covering the Iraqi War and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, decided to investigate the Louisiana coastline where her maternal grandmother grew up.
“I had heard stories my whole life about how we were related to some Native American princess, and I wanted to get to the bottom of that story,” says the New York native now living in Dallas.
What Alford found — and recorded in a remarkable series of images now hanging at the High Museum — was a war of another kind: a French/Native American community clinging to a narrow spit of land that has been obliterated by the oil and gas industry, storms and hurricanes.
Alford’s eloquent portrait of a place — houses perched at odd angles on an eroded landscape, young boys swimming in murky bayous, shrimp fishermen picking over their catch, garbage cans in flames — is part of the High’s “Picturing the South” commission series. It is also the inaugural hardback publication from Atlanta’s new Fall Line Press.
Since 1996, the Atlanta museum has invited nine “Picturing the South” photographers — some Southern, some not — to take pictures of the region for its permanent collection. Through Sept. 2, Alford’s watery blue and green prints are paired with British photographer Martin Parr’s garish neon vision of urban Atlanta and Vermont native Shane Lavalette’s poetic investigation of traditional gospel and blues music.
Parr, who speaks at the High’s Rich Theatre at 7 Thursday, visited the Atlanta Pride Festival, the Atlanta Steeplechase, CNN, the Centers for Disease Control, Ebenezer Baptist Church and the World of Coca-Cola, among other places, on two brief visits in 2010 and 2011.
Thus, museum-goers can see Parr’s portrait of waitresses at the Silver Skillet Restaurant on 14th Street next to an absurd shot of a guy chomping on a giant turkey leg. As if to juxtapose the old and new South, a picture of a rainbow-flag layer cake hangs over a plate of ’cue and stew from Harold’s Barbecue.
“It was perfect, because it was very colorful, very bright,” Parr said of Atlanta by phone from his home in England. “I took to it immediately.”
Parr’s images have just been published in a book, “Up and Down Peachtree” (Contrasto, $40). Lavalette has raised more than $20,000 in a Kickstarter.com campaign to make a book out of his images of juke joints, bottle trees and stained glass windows. And Alford’s Louisiana photographs have been compiled in “Bottom of da Boot” (Fall Line, $45).
“Kael Alford is one of those important photojournalists who really succeeds in making beautiful pictures that tell important stories,” says Fall Line publisher William Boling. “When I learned that she was doing the work with the vanishing island off the Louisiana coast and those communities, I knew it would be something very special. The work has a very interesting feel to it, in part because she’s documenting as any journalist would in an objective way the circumstances of the people who are there, but also because she has a personal connection with the place, through her ancestors and her family.”
Fall Line was also involved in the making of “Hot Spots: Martin Parr in the American South,” a documentary by Atlanta filmmaker Neal Broffman that will be shown at Thursday's event. Boling proudly takes credit introducing Parr to Harold’s Barbecue.
Meanwhile, as a companion exhibit to “Picturing the South,” the High is exhibiting “Revisiting the South: Richard Misrach’s Cancer Alley” through Oct. 14. For his “Picturing the South” commission in 1998, Misrach photographed the polluted Mississippi River corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. In 2010, the High asked him to revisit the project, and the resulting 21 large-scale prints are as disturbing as they are beautiful. In one, the Norco Cumulus Cloud, a vast ever-present puff of pollution, hangs over the Shell Oil Refinery in Norco, La. In another, a cemetery crowded with mausoleums sits under the menacing shadow of the Dow Chemical Corp. in Taft, La.
Brett Abbott, the High’s curator of photography, says the Misrach redux is a testament to the way the series has created an ongoing conversation and a legacy. “What I like is this idea that the commission is still yielding results 14 years later,” Abbott said. “And I hope that the commissions that we are doing now will continue to yield things in the future.”
Abbott, who arrived at the High last year, wants to continue the artist-driven, no-strings-attached commissions — when he can find the money. “I think it’s a really important program,” Abbott said. “It may be unique. I don’t know of other museums that are doing this, at least consistently.” (Previous commissions went to Sally Mann, Dawoud Bey, Alex Webb, Emmett Gowin and Alec Soth.)
“I think it’s a great idea and I do think its unique,” Museum of Modern Art associate photography curator Sarah Meister said of the commissions. “We certainly don’t have anything like this.” Meister was at the High for the opening “Picturing New York,” a survey of 150 Manhattan images she curated.
The “Picturing the South” artists said they were moved by the relationships they built during the projects. “I found the personal connections I made with people are what kept me coming back,” Alford said. “That was kind of a revelation to me as a photographer, and I decided to just follow that, that human instinct. To make friends, to find people that I liked and cared about and just visit them as often as I could afford to do.”
Though Lavalette grew up listening to Southern music, he had not visited the region. After exploring Mississippi, Tennessee, Athens, Savannah and Elijay, he concluded that “Southern hospitality is the real thing.”
“I hope the project communicates a little bit of my love affair with the region,” says the 25-year-old photographer, now based in Syracuse, N.Y. “I was just really inspired by the landscape and the people, just incredibly moved. I couldn’t have done it without the support of people who were generous and welcomed me into their homes along the way.”
Photography exhibits
“Picturing the South” and “Picturing New York.” Through Sept. 2.
“Revisiting the South: Richard Misrach’s Cancer Alley.” Through Oct. 14.
$12-$19.50. High Museum of Art, 1280 Peachtree St. N.E. Atlanta. 404-733-5000. high.org.
Photography lecture
“Conversations with Contemporary Artists: Martin Parr”
7 p.m. Thursday. Free. Tickets limited to 2 per person. Call to reserve. Rich Theatre, High Museum of Art, 1280 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. 404-733-5000. high.org.
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