Mark Steinmetz
Athens, GA (Balloon at Dusk), 1995
Athens, GA (girl on hood of car), 1996
Summer Camp, Hendersonville, NC (Girl with Camera), 1995
Athens, GA (ribbon), 2009
Gas Station, Conyers, GA 1997
Knoxville, TN (man sitting on table), 1991
Lightning Strike, Mississippi, 1994
Knoxville, TN (man in creek) 1992
Knoxville, TN (weed in crack), 1992
Margaretha, Athens, GA, 1999
College Park, Georgia (plane and streetlight), 2016
Atlanta, GA (father and son by gas station), 2007
Jessica, Athens, GA, 1997
Elberton, GA (Boy in Car Window), 1995
Stone Mountain, GA (couple lying on rock) 1994
Reuben, Athens, GA, (man in kudzu), 1995
Elisabethton, TN (baby on blanket), 2001
Maia, Knoxville, (woman at fence), 1991
Charlotte, NC (goth girl) 1997
South by Mark Steinmetz, installation image.
South by Mark Steinmetz, installation image.
South by Mark Steinmetz, installation image.
South by Mark Steinmetz, installation image.
South by Mark Steinmetz, installation image.
Yancey Richardson Gallery is pleased to present South, an exhibition of photographs by Mark Steinmetz. The exhibition is comprised of black-and-white photographs drawn from the artistʼs decades-long career photographing the southeastern United States, primarily in Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi. Steinmetzʼs images are imbued with an intrinsically Southern tenderness, melancholy and longing that is universally resonant. With his lens, Steinmetz transcends traditional documentary photography, and depicts the human condition with an allegorical sublimity.
Steinmetzʼs subjects, at first ordinary and everyday, are captured with rawness and reverence. Summer lightning crackling above an abandoned highway, or a man holding a child outside of a gas station is elevated from idiosyncratic to the mythic. Rendered in stunning silver gelatin, each of his compositions is an open- ended question without forced narrative or singular emotional effect. Steinmetz rarely knows his subjects, and in some cases asks them to repeat a gesture he has seen them making. The resulting portraits invite the viewer deeper behind each captured glance and wistful stare. In Athens, GA, 1996, a young woman reclines on the hood of a car. Her circumstances are unclear, but she exudes a palpable desire to be somewhere or something else.
Mark Steinmetz was recently awarded a commission from the High Museum of Art, Atlanta as part of their Picturing the South series, which will be exhibited at the museum in 2017. A graduate of Yaleʼs MFA photography program, Steinmetz spent a year photographing alongside Garry Winogrand in Los Angeles in the early 1980s. Since 1994, he has been living and working in Athens, Georgia. His work has been acquired by major museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He has nine monographs of his work including South East, South Central, Greater Atlanta, Angel City West, and The Players published by Nazraeli Press and the 2016 release 15 Miles to K-Ville by Stanley/Barker. Among other awards, Mark Steinmetz is the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship.
Southern Accent: Seeking the American South
This unprecedented exhibition addresses and complicates the many realities, fantasies and myths that have long captured the public's imagination about the American South. Presenting a wide range of perspectives, from both within and outside of the region, the exhibition creates a composite portrait of southern identity through the work of 60 artists.
Mark Steinmetz will participate in the Photographer's Lecture Series at the International Center for Photography on March 27, 2013 from 7-9pm. Tickers for the lecture are limited and are available through ICP.
Mark Steinmetz has released three new books in 2012, including Summertime, published by Nazraeli, idyll (with Raymond Meeks) and pastoral, both limited edition books published by Silas Finch. In 2011, TBW Books published Philip and Micheline, a book about the artist's parents. Additionally, Steinmetz's book The Ancient Tigers of My Neighborhood (Nazraeli) was nominated by Robert Adams as a best book of 2010 at the Kassel Photobook Festival.
Completing his trilogy, South, which includes previous books South Central and South East, Mark Steinmetz releases Greater Atlanta by Nazraeli Press. Widely praised, Greater Atlanta was nominated as one of the best books of 2009 by Photo-Eye book critics, right after Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans, Expanded Edition.
Mark Steinmetz's new book Greater Atlanta, his third with Nazraeli Press, will be released in Fall 2009. The Yale Art Gallery recently acquired a group of Steinmetz's works from the edition for their collection.
