Photographer Stephen Marc will be visiting Starkville for a second time to display his latest collection of still life art.
Marc is a Chicago native who has had two monographs of his works published. His works have continuing themes such as ‘The roots of African-American culture.
The photographic style used in Marc’s books is called documentary photography. By simply taking photographs of subjects without altering or ordering them, documentary photographers try to capture the essence of life’s simple pleasures, or just its character.
While his career began in the ’70s, it has not stopped growing or even slowed down, as is exemplified by his 1992 monograph, “The Black Trans-Atlantic Experience: Street Life and Culture in Ghana, Jamaica, England, and the United States.” This work showed the spread of African culture as a result of enslavement.
His current medium, however, is digital photography, wherein he makes “montages,” or collages, that use multiple photographs and some light, non-Hollywood digital effects in each piece.
One of many intellectual fascinations for Stephen Marc is the symbol of pattern. His interest in the pattern exists on a variety of levels not exclusive to just the physical. For instance, the African-American hair braiding tradition. Though physical hair braiding is present in all cultures, which connects people.
In September of last year, MSU Gallery Director Alexander Stelioes-Wills managed to talk with Marc by reaching him through a number of contacts. Stelioes-Wills was interested in the possibility of Marc using Mississippi, and more specifically, Starkville, as subjects.
Starkville being distant from his current residence in Arizona, where he is a professor of photography in the Arizona State University School of Art, Marc agreed. By the time his five-day trip here was said and done, Marc had taken over 2,000 digital pictures.
Students native to Mississippi may be interested to know that many of his photographs were taken in Columbus, throughout the delta, Oktibbeha county, and Canton. Canton has been the subject of famed author Eudora Welty’s own photographic explorations, and is also the city in which Stephen Marc’s great-great-grandmother once lived. Stelioes-Wills and Marc also sought out old plantations.
“I think that this is a great opportunity for a show because it really connects with people who aren’t just interested in aesthetics,” Stelioes-Willis said. “The project has already caused many associations and new communications between different departments, and Stephen has also met and connected with many new people. I think that the basic premise of the entire project is connecting people to the arts.”