Solo exhibition featuring selected works from Tema Stauffer's Southern Fiction series.
October 4–27, 2021
Southern Fiction explores the history of the American South using its literary tradition as a road map, focusing on environments which have shaped the imaginations of 20th-century Southern writers during their formative years or throughout the course of their lives and careers. The images portray domestic settings, vernacular architecture, and rural landscapes that visually resonate with the history, culture, and atmosphere of the Deep South. Since 2018, Tema Stauffer has made road trips to Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi to shoot large-format color photographs of settings associated with writers such as Flannery O’Connor, Alice Walker, Truman Capote, Harper Lee, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams, and Richard Wright. The series depicts the former homes of some of these writers, sites that were relevant to their backgrounds and literary works, and the surrounding architecture and landscapes that shaped their fiction. By examining the roots of its greatest writers, the series investigates the richness and complexity of the South through the evocative settings that defined their experiences and voices.
Reception & Artist Lecture
When
Monday, October 11, 2021
5:00-7:00 pm CDT
Where
Artist Lecture: 005 Biggin Hall
Reception: Biggin Gallery, 001 Biggin Hall
This event is free and open to the public. 005 Biggin Hall and Biggin Gallery are handicap accessible.
About the Artist
Tema Stauffer is a photographer whose work examines the social, economic, and cultural landscape of American spaces. She is currently an Associate Professor of Photography at East Tennessee State University. Her work has been exhibited at Sasha Wolf, Daniel Cooney Fine Art, and Jen Bekman galleries in New York, as well as galleries and institutions internationally. In 2018, Daylight Books published a monograph of her Upstate series portraying the lingering legacy of American industrial and agricultural history in and around Hudson, New York. The book was nominated for the Unveil’d Photobook Award 2018 and the prints were exhibited at ETSU’s Reece Museum, Tracey Morgan Gallery, ilon Art Gallery, and Hudson Hall. Her work is represented by Tracey Morgan Gallery in Asheville, North Carolina, where her current series, Southern Fiction, will be exhibited in Fall 2021. The production of this body of work received support from ETSU’s Research Development Committee through a Small Grant Award in 2019 and a Major Grant Award in 2020. She is the recipient of a Tennessee Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship award for fiscal year 2022 towards completing this project.