Mark Steinmetz

Mark Steinmetz

The Philadelphia Photo Arts Center is very pleased to host a free lecture with visiting artist Mark Steinmetz on Friday, March 11 from 6:00 – 7:00pm. His work will be on display at PPAC during the East of Eden show. Steinmetz has created a powerful and moving trilogy of photographs about the South, focusing on places where transition is a recurring theme. He portrays drifters, stray animals, kids, teenagers, car culture, telephones, convenience stores, and suburban sprawl. Beginning in 1992, Steinmetz photographed in the streets, neighborhoods and outskirts of Knoxville, Tennessee. This work makes up South Central (Nazraeli Press, 2006). The title of the book is derived from the South Central Bell Telephone Company that serves Knoxville, and their public payphones, which becomes a reminder of the area’s socio-economic condition. For the second part of the trilogy, Steinmetz turns his focus to Athens, Atlanta, New Orleans, Memphis and East Tennessee, and the roadways in between. These pictures make up his second book South East (Nazraeli Press, 2008). Steinmetz ends the series with Greater Atlanta (Nazraeli Press, 2009), in which he photographed Atlanta and its outlying regions, investigating subtle notions of progress. Throughout his work, Steinmetz creates intense black-and-white portraits and landscapes that reflect a sense of displacement and isolation that is familiar to many Americans.

Mark Steinmetz received his MFA in photography from Yale University in 1986. His work is in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others. Recent solo exhibitions include Charles Hartman Fine Art, Portland, Oregon and Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York. He currently lives in Athens, GA.



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