User:Jeromeemile/sandbox

JERRY SIEGEL

Throughout his artistic career, Jerry Siegel has sought to photograph what his eyes see and what his heart connects to. Jerry Siegel, born and raised in Selma, AL (March 28, 1958) is a photographer working primarily in the South, documenting the

LIFE

Siegel graduated from the Art Institute of Atlanta in 1982. Since 1986 he has successfully maintained a commercial photography studio in Atlanta and Birmingham.

Jerry Siegel, a native of Selma, graduated from the Art Institute of Atlanta. After twenty-nine years as a much-sought after commercial photographer in Atlanta, Siegel relocated to Birmingham where he continues to shoot for commercial clients while also pursuing his fine arts work, which also includes documenting the unique cultural landscape of the South, focusing on the Black Belt region as well as his ongoing series of portraits of southern artists. His work has been shown in solo exhibitions at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia in Atlanta, the Wiregrass Museum of Art in Dothan, and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Art. A commissioned body of work for the Columbus Museum in Columbus, Georgia, was featured in the 2009 solo exhibition Now and Then, Snapshots of the South. (UA PRess)

OVERVIEW

For more than fifteen years, Jerry Siegel has been photographing southern artists. Following in the footsteps of his namesake uncle, Jerry Siegel--who was one of the earliest collectors and promoters of southern artists--the younger Siegel continually traces regional southern artistic talent back to its creators, whom he captures in portraits as emotionally affecting as they are visually striking. Facing South: Portraits of Southern Artists reproduces, in both black-and-white and color, one hundred of these portraits of the artists that Siegel has worked with--potters, sculptures, and photographers. Facing South also includes two essays, one on the nature of photographic portraiture by Julian Cox and one on the regional countenance reflected in Siegel’s portraits by Dennis Harper. Brief biographies of the one hundred subjects are also included.

Anna Minges of The Ogden Museum of Art wrote about this series as “three generations of the most important artists whose work has come to define the genre.”

The renown master photographer Arnold Newman once said about Siegel’s work, “This is how it should be done. This is not only the work of a professional but the work of an artist.”

Winner of the first Artadia Award in Atlanta in 2009, Siegel's work has been seen in solo exhibitions including The Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans; The Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia in Atlanta; Montgomery Museum of Fine Art in Montgomery, AL; and The Jule Collins Smith Museum in Auburn, AL. In 2009, a commissioned body of work was featured at the Columbus Museum in Columbus, GA, in the exhibition Now and Then, Snapshots of the South. In 2007 Siegel’s series, Rt 2, Box 348E about his family home in Selma, was featured in the exhibition Responding to Home at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia in Atlanta, and traveled to The Appleton Museum of Art, Ocala, FL in 2008.

His work is in private and corporate collections in Atlanta, Birmingham, Charleston, New Orleans, New York, Chicago, Washington, DC, and Canada. Permanent public collections that include his work are The Telfair Museum, Jepson Center for the Arts in Savannah, GA; The Ogden Museum of Southern Art; The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point; The Montgomery Museum of Fine Art in Montgomery, AL; Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia in Atlanta; Jule Collins Smith Museum in Auburn, AL; Wiregeass Museum of Art in Dothan, AL; and Louisiana Museum of Arts and Science in Baton Rouge, LA.

received his bachelor's (1958) and master's (1959) degrees in fine arts from the University of Alabama, studying under noted abstract expressionist Melville Price. Since 1968 he has taught at the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, D.C. His artistic career began with the painting of large abstract-expressionist canvasses, but gradually he began to be drawn to material that spoke about the place of his childhood. Although he was raised in Tuscaloosa, Christenberry spent his summers with extended family in rural Hale County. After graduating from the University of Alabama and beginning a promising, if not immediately rewarding, artistic career in New York City, he came across the 1941 book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, in which James Agee describes in prose, and Walker Evans in photographs, the experience of living among the dirt-poor farming families of Hale County during the Great Depression. Some of Evans's photographs made a deep impression on Christenberry. Shortly after beginning a professorship at Corcoran College, Christenberry began making annual visits to Hale County during the summer to visit family and to explore and make photographs. Originally these all were made with a Kodak Brownie camera given to him as a child, but he later moved to a large format view camera in order to capture more detail. On one notable occasion in 1973, Walker Evans, who had encouraged Christenberry to take his photographs seriously, accompanied him. This was Evans's first and only return to Hale County since 1936. One of the results of this pilgrimage was a series of remarkable photographs documenting the decay of individual structures, which are photographed as nearly isolated objects. In 1974, Christenberry began translating some of these photographed buildings into incredibly detailed sculptures that accurately reproduce their state of decay and patina. Although very detailed and properly proportioned, Christenberry does not refer to these creations as models, as he says they are not based on precise measurements, and he prefers that they be called sculptures. The bases for these sculptures often are set in soil taken from these places. On many of these trips, Christenberry has collected old advertising signs and other found objects that inspire him. Some of these are incorporated into his work, while others hang in his studio. Another series of works was provoked by a terrifying incident when, out of curiosity, he tried to attend a meeting of the Ku Klux Klan. Confronted at the door by a glaring masked figure, Christenberry fled. Although he destroyed his first two Klan paintings, the subject occupied him for many years, resulting in a dense multi-media construction adjacent to his studio that came to be known as the Klan Room," which was burgled mysteriously in 1979. Christenberry has largely reconstructed the room, which is filled with paintings, found objects, drawings, sculptures, dioramas, and a series of fabric dolls of Klansmen in their hooded robes. Though known more as a photographer and multi-media artist than as a painter, Christenberry continues to teach painting. His work has been exhibited in solo and group shows around the world and is the subject of several monographs.