“Nashville: A Pandemic Observed” – Artists’ Reception

llustrating their divergent perspectives and practices, four photographers from Nashville, Tennessee, USA, each with a solid foundation in newspapers, have prepared a pandemic-era exhibit at the Scarritt Bennett Center in Nashville. The work is also slated to be added to Vanderbilt University’s permanent fine art collection. The project is as much a study of photographic styles as a record of the pandemic.

Scarritt Bennett Center’s Laskey Gallery is free and open to the public on weekdays, 9am–4pm, and on Sundays from 3pm–8pm. This exhibit will run from July 1–September 30, 2021.

Exhibit Dates: July 1–September 30, 2021
Gallery Hours: Mon.–Fri., 9am–4pm; Sun., 3pm–8pm
Artists’ Reception: July 15, 4:30pm–6:30pm
Cost: free and open to the public
Parking: complimentary, Lots A & B (campus map)
Purchase art: click here

About the Artists
Joon Powell wields both a digital SLR and a 4 x 5 film camera to show her family’s isolation during the pandemic of 2020. Drawing from the tradition of Emmet Gowin or Sally Mann, Powell documents her family often using a series of diptychs to deepen the images’ meaning.

Bill Steber documents blues music and the American south using antiquated photographic processes. A tenured portraitist, Steber’s work is informed by a lifetime of visual storytelling paired with an extensive knowledge of music and the history of photography. The specific pandemic portraits created for this exhibit utilize a wet plate process, which gives the images a haunting timeless quality.

Veteran newspaper photographer and photography instructor, John Partipilo encapsulates Nashville’s diverse population with the observant and patient eye of a painter. His photographs of Nashvillians as they experience isolation, protest, sickness, and more, lay bare the experience of many southern Americans at this unique historical moment.

Dawn Majors’ photos are a quiet exploration of the intersection of nature and humanity’s odd creations, with a gentle affirmation of her own identity. At once painterly and specific, macabre and whimsical, Majors’ full-on embrace of her cellphone as a tool shows a jaunty appreciation for pedestrian discoveries with an escapist appeal.

For questions about this exhibit, please contact Sue Bock at [email protected].