Southbound: Photographs of and about the New South
Southbound Project Website
Visit the southboundproject.org website below and learn more about the artists, watch interviews, read essays and poems, listen to the Southbound playlist, and more.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION:
Opening October 22 at the LSU Museum of Art is Southbound: Photographs of and about the New South, featuring fifty-six photographers’ visions of the South over the first decades of the twenty-first century. Accordingly, it offers a composite image of the region. The photographs echo stories told about the South as a bastion of tradition, as a region remade through Americanization and globalization, and as a land full of surprising realities. The project’s purpose is to investigate the senses of place in the South that congeal, however fleetingly, in the spaces between the photographers’ looking, their images, and our own preexisting ideas about the region.
Southbound embraces the conundrum of its name. To be southbound is to journey to a place in flux, radically transformed over recent decades, yet also to the place where the past resonates most insistently in the United States. To be southbound is also to confront the weight of preconceived notions about this place, thick with stereotypes, encoded in the artistic, literary, and media records. Southbound engages with and unsettles assumed narratives about this contested region by providing fresh perspectives for understanding the complex admixture of history, geography, and culture that constitutes today’s New South.
Southbound is curated by Mark Sloan, director and chief curator of the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, and Mark Long, professor of political science, both of whom are on the faculty of the College of Charleston.
Recognizing the complexity of understanding any place, let alone one as charged as the American South, the curators’ approach is transdisciplinary. The photographs will be complemented by a commissioned video, digital mapping, an extensive stand-alone website (SouthboundProject.org), and a comprehensive exhibition catalogue. The catalogue draws on expertise from disciplines in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Emmy-award winning filmmaker John David Reynolds has produced a documentary featuring interviews with select photographers and writers.
The history of the American South is among the most storied of any region in the world. As a result of the vitality of its culture and the diversity of its inhabitants—to say nothing about the salience of photography in the United States—the region has also come to be among the most photographed. Through the exhibition, video, remappings, website, and catalogue—separately and in tandem—the Southbound project charts new courses toward expanded imaginings for the twenty-first century South.
GIS MAPPING STATION:
The Halsey Institute commissioned Dr. Rick Bunch, a geographic-information-science (GIS) and spatial-cognition specialist, to design an interactive map of the South, representing everything from street-name maps to data collected on prison populations and churchgoers, among other topics. Available on interactive technology inside the exhibition space, this Index of Southerness will allow viewers to switch indicators on and off and arrive at their own maps of the South.
LSU MOA SPECIAL FEATURES:
Photographs from Southbound will be included in LSU MOA’s Art in Louisiana permanent galleries to add a new lens through which to view the collection. This aspect of the project will be guest curated by artist Letitia Huckaby’s whose own photographic works are also on view in her solo exhibition, This Same Dusty Road (click here to learn more about Letitia Huckaby: This Same Dusty Road at LSU MOA).
ON VIEW: October 22, 2020 – February 14, 2021
(Opening day / Thursday, October 22: visit this exhibition from 5 – 8 p.m.)
Curated for LSUMOA by Courtney Taylor with selections guest curated by Letitia Huckaby
LSU MOA Installation
LSU MOA Southbound Zine Project
The LSU Museum of Art had a call for writing and photography submissions in response to the Southbound: Photographs of and about the New South exhibition. Students wrote in response to photographs featured and/or created their own interpretations of what the South means to them. Listen as some read their submissions aloud in videos and view other creative submissions.
Exhibition Sponsors
Southbound: Photographs of and about the New South was organized by the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina. This program is made possible in part by a grant from the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge, funded by the East Baton Rouge Parish Mayor-President and Metro Council. Additional support is provided by generous donors to the Annual Exhibition Fund: The Imo N. Brown Memorial Fund in memory of Heidel Brown and Mary Ann Brown; Louisiana CAT; Charles Schwing; The Alma Lee, H. N., and Cary Saurage Fund; The Newton B. Thomas Family/Newtron Group Fund; LSU College of Art & Design; Elizabeth M. Thomas; Mr. and Mrs. Sanford A. Arst. Programming sponsored by Louisiana CAT and Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge.
Virtual Programs
Click on the videos below to watch LSU MOA Virtual Programs facilitated by LSU Faculty as they have a conversation with Southbound artists: Sheila Pree Bright, Jessica Ingram, Mark Steinmetz, Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick, Susan Worsham, and McNair Evans. Click here to visit the LSU MOA YouTube Channel for more virtual programs.
Lectures and Programs
Press
LSU MOA recently spoke with graduate assistant Autumn Johnson, first year MFA candidate studying Printmaking at LSU, about current projects Johnson is helping with at the museum including the Southbound Zine Project. Check out our conversation to learn more!