Baldwin Lee and Mark Steinmetz

The exhibition features over 150 years of key moments in the visual history of the Southern United States, with over two hundred photographs taken from 1850 to present The South is perhaps the most mythologized region in the United States and also one of the most depicted. Since the dawn of photography in the nineteenth century, photographers have articulated the distinct and evolving character of the South’s people, landscape, and culture and reckoned with its fraught history. Indeed, many of the urgent questions we face today about what defines the American experience—from racism, poverty, and the legacy of slavery to environmental disaster, immigration, and the changes wrought by a modern, global economy—appear as key themes in the photography of the South. The visual history of the South is inextricably intertwined with the history of photography and also the history of America. 

A Long Arc: Photography and the American South at the High Museum of Art showcases more than one hundred photographers, including Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Gordon Parks, William Eggleston, Baldwin Lee, Sally Mann, Carrie Mae Weems, Dawoud Bey, Alec Soth, Mark Steinmetz, and An-My Lê.