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It's the state bird of Tennessee and a great metaphor for photography, which on some level seeks to mimic a moment in time for its own purposes. It's also one of the most exciting shows to hit the Nashville art scene in a while. Curated by Nashville photographer Phillip Carpenter and displayed in the aptly named Brief Gallery—a temporary art space that was converted from a storefront just for this show—Mockingbird features a jaw-dropping lineup of fine-art photographers who are represented in collections ranging from the Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney and the Guggenheim to the Cleveland Museum of Art and Minneapolis' Walker Art Center, to name a few. Athens, Ga., photographer Mark Steinmetz's spellbinding black-and-white images have a cinematic intensity that transforms mundane moments into high drama. In her Big Rock Candy Mountain series, Tammy Mercure captures the gaudy spectacle of Smoky Mountain tourist towns like Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, where vacationers ostensibly seeking an outdoors getaway are nonetheless surrounded by an endless sea of man-made kitsch. UT art professor Baldwin Lee creates photos and collage-like panoramas of subjects ranging from New York City and 9/11 Ground Zero to beach vacationers and black Americans in the South. Carpenter's own photographs cover a broad spectrum, from the rural South to a Minneapolis high-rise to the bustling streets of downtown Paris (France, not Tennessee). Also including work by Shawne Brown, Cip Contreras, Tim Davis, Wardell Milan II, Mike Smith and Alec Soth, Mockingbird is sure to be one of the year's artistic highlights.
Nov. 7-Dec. 15, 2009
Nov. 7-Dec. 15, 2009
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