Birney Imes and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art

I’ve been really into the Ogden Museum of Southern Art this week. It’s part of the University of New Orleans. I’ve been viewing their collections all day everyday.

Found out about it through this article in Garden and Gun magazine on their current exhibit titled Mississippi in Photographs.

And I’m thoroughly digging the work of Birney Imes. He photographs that which initially inspired me to be an artist, when I was a child. My family and I would journey to Mississippi – my parents’ homeland. It was my views of the Mississippi landscapes and the innumerable shacks found within them that made me decide I wanted to be a painter. I never did paint anything but years later I found a camera. Mississippi continues to inspire me to this day. I want to go back and photograph it.

One of Birney Imes’ photos is also the cover of one of my favorite albums – Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, by Lucinda Williams. I had no idea!

It just so happens that Birney was photographing around the same time I was staring out car windows.

Here’s some of his work as viewed on the Ogden Museum website: Birney Imes at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art.

* TIP: If you click on the individual photo it will magically get bigger! I highly recommend it.

The photographs presented here are part of a larger body of work which examines intergenerational dysfunction and oppression through a climatic lens. Wet and dry qualities exist in these photographs. They reflect a personal experience of disillusionment and specific places where I call home. Places where there are only two seasons – wet and dry. The ocean meets the desert.

San Francisco, CA 2010

San Francisco, CA 2010

San Francisco, CA 2010

San Francisco, CA 2010

San Francisco, CA 2010

San Francisco, CA 2010

San Francisco, CA 2010

San Francisco, CA 2010

San Francisco, CA 2010

Florence, SC 2009

Florence, SC 2009

Eureka, CA 2010

Miami, FL 2010

Miami, FL 2010

Miami, FL 2010

Holly Ridge, MS 2008

Miami, FL 2009

Avalon, MS 2008