By Ryan Steed.
Mounted on French Paper, stamped, and signed.
8 x 8 prints are an edition of 7.
Interested in a smaller or larger print size? Let us know.
The photograph is the most powerful of objects, built from complexity through frame and composition; it is time and space captured still. The architecture that builds an image and defines a photograph is never simple. A photograph can be the proof of a moment, an object for deconstruction, a frame to view oneself, and it can be all these at once. Photographs can teach without the barriers of language. They can speak across any divide or write in any form. A photograph prevails when words fail us; the eye is our translator. When history is written, the image is always a companion. Sometimes the image exists outside the main body of work, between the margins, where we learn, explore, and navigate meaning.
Due South began with five people collectively speaking through the medium of photography about where we are from, the American South. This work is part of our collective history and bond. When making work about where we’re from, the reality is that the imagery is more often about who we are. When our work is combined, it becomes a dialogue that explores our similarities and differences by bouncing back and forth among each other — a question, an argument, a scream, a cry — confronting who we are and where we come from.
When working in concert with one another, authorship is blurred. Questions are set forth about who the photographer is and what becomes of the narrative. The visuals and the poetics are rearranged. By binding an image to another’s history, does the title’s meaning change, and does this allow us to see it anew? The 40 images in this exhibition started with titles written by each other. These titles are borrowed from each of our histories; they are someone’s Last Night in Town . . . This is My Divorce List . . . Don’t Tell A Soul . . . Shouldn’t Be Ashamed . . . Don’t Wait For Me. These lines are personal; they are a heartbreak, a grandmother’s musings, a motto, a line picked from a story told in a group. By sharing and interpreting each other’s words, these images are our combined voices. They stand collectively; we made them with and for each other. These images are now all of us.
