User:Lizabeth Allen/sandbox

Keith Calhoun (born January 1, 1955) and Chandra McCormick (born August 27, 1957) are photographers from New Orleans, Louisiana. Calhoun moved to Los Angeles during his teenage years, where he attended Los Angeles Community College, working at KCET public radio station before returning to New Orleans to open a portrait studio.

McComick and Calhoun met in 1978 when McCormick had her portrait made. Soon after, she became his apprentice, then collaborator and wife. The couple work closely, photographing the way of life in the African American communities in the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans and rural Louisiana. Referring to themselves as “visual anthropologists” they document every aspect of life in communities, capturing daily life, celebrations, rituals, labor, “compiling a historical record as they took pictures of the pleasure clubs, the prisoners, the dockworkers, the bluesmen, the river baptisms, the sugar cane fields, the voodoo priestesses, the Mardi Gras Indians”

McCormick and Calhoun relocated temporarily to Houston during Hurricane Katrina, documenting the state of the refugee shelters while there. When they returned, their home was destroyed and almost two-thirds of their photographic archive had been damaged. The water shifted the color or cracked the film, creating an unintended artistic effect. The damages images have been in the shows “Gone” and “Pitch White”. In 2007 the couple opened a community arts center, called L9 Center for the Arts in the Lower 9th ward of New Orleans. The center serves as a gallery space, a performing arts center.

Photographing mostly in black and white, they take portraits and group action shots. Their photographs often cross into social commentary. In the series "Angola" they documented the men imprisoned at Angola State Penitentiary, partnering with songwriter Aaron Neville, who wrote poems about the prison as well. In their 2014 show at Prospect, the artists compare the prison to a plantation, drawing attention to high incarceration rates in the state of Louisiana.

Exhibitions:

Oct. 25, 2014- Jan. 25, 2015: “Angola: The Prison a series at Prospect 3 Art Biennial in New Orleans, on display at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art titled Slavery: The Prison Industrial Complex.