Myth, Manner and Memory

Myth, Manners and Memory
Photographers of the American South

This exhibition brings together a number of prominent American artists who have, in various ways, engaged with the physical and psychological landscape of the southern states of the USA.

Combining historical and contemporary works, it is a collection of memorable images of this distinctive region, its people and their lives as seen by artists including Walker Evans, William Eggleston, William Christenberry, Susan Lipper, Alec Soth and Carrie Mae Weems. Some of the artists make images from being Southerners themselves, some from experiences of spending a considerable length of time in the South as an outsider, and some informed by the region's history and social issues.

This exhibition does not set out to define the American South but explores what is perhaps indefinable - the cultural complexities and tensions, the constant but unresolved dialogues between past and present, and the varying patterns of everyday life in the South that might, however elusively, constitute its sense of identity.