Seven photographers focus on landscapes at MOCA Jacksonville
Andrew Moore, Too Cheap for Roses, Six Flags, New Orleans, 2012. Archival pigment print, 40 x 50 inches. Image copyright the artist and courtesy of Jackson Fine Art.
The photographs in MOCA Jacksonville’s current, self-curated exhibition, Southern Exposure: Portraits of a Changing Landscape, focus on the land but speak volumes about the people there – in the present and the past.
The black and white and color photographs, by such renowned artists as William Christenberry, Sally Mann, Richard Misrach, Andrew Moore, and Alec Soth, alongside the fresh, compelling visions of Deborah Luster and Jeanine Michna-Bales, present a timeless portrait of this storied region.
Some of the most recent work in Southern Exposure is from Moore’s series The South, an exploration of New Orleans, Atlanta, Tunica, and other areas of the Mississippi Delta – a region that has fascinated him since he first began to take pictures. Moore, who lived
William Christenberry, House and Car, Near Akron, Alabama, 1978, Printed 2012. Archival pigment print, Suite of 20, 8 x 10 inches. Courtesy the artist and Hemphill Fine Arts.
in New Orleans for almost two years after college, was drawn to the light, surfaces, and patina of the city’s architecture.
The South’s rich history and the artist’s longtime interest in how architecture embodies that history coalesce in the new body of work. The South, Moore’s ongoing series, has only been exhibited once before, at Jackson Fine Art in Atlanta, and two of his seven images in Southern Exposure have never been shown before.
Too Cheap for Roses, Six Flags, New Orleans (2012) and Zydeco Zinger, Abandoned Six Flags Theme Park, New Orleans (2012) are
surreal reminders of the legacy of Hurricane Katrina, after which the heavily damaged
© Deborah Luster, Tooth for an Eye, Ledger 04-08, Location. Danziger Bridge, Date(s). September 4, 2005, Name(s). James Brissette (19), Notes. Killed by N.O.P.D. in the aftermath
of Katrina., 2008-2010. Toned silver gelatin print mounted on Dibond, dimension variable. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
theme park permanently closed. Much like Moore’s Detroit project, these images depict a landscape that once flowed with people but now sits abandoned and eerily lifeless.
Article written by Denise M. Reagan
