The University of Southern Mississippi’s Gallery of Art and Design will present “Two Photographers: Don Norris and Betty Press” Oct. 15-Nov. 13, bringing together two Hattiesburg artists whose photographs explore the relationship between people, place and history.
An opening reception will take place Thursday, Oct. 15, from 5 to 7 p.m. at the gallery in the George Hurst Building, 3000-3082 Pearl St., on the Hattiesburg campus. All events are free and open to the public.
The exhibition pairs Norris’ precise studies of rural Southern architecture with Press’ photographs of everyday life in Sierra Leone, Kenya, Sudan and Mississippi. Their subjects range from historic buildings to neighborhood businesses and personal encounters, revealing stories rooted in particular places while drawing connections across cultures.
Press, a documentary photographer with more than three decades of experience, began taking road trips across Mississippi after moving to Hattiesburg. Using black-and-white film and vintage and toy cameras, she developed “Finding Mississippi,” a project examining the intertwined experiences of Black and white Southerners. Her series “Storefronts in Kenya and Mississippi” brings small businesses in both places into conversation, highlighting the creativity and resourcefulness of their owners.
Her African photographs, published in “I Am Because We Are: African Wisdom in Image and Proverb,” earned the 2012 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters photography award. Her work is held in collections including Yale University’s Beinecke Library, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Mississippi Museum of Art and The Do Good Fund.
Norris, an Indiana native and emeritus professor of biological sciences, is drawn to the local building traditions that give the Deep South its distinctive architectural character. His clean compositions emphasize the forms and details of historic structures while preserving a sense of the communities and histories surrounding them.
“My favorite work is of the South,” Norris writes in his artist’s statement. “I think of it as mainstream southern photography: images as vessels for narrative; about the old and the ordinary; faithful to its subjects; and carrying the gravitas of southern history.”
Norris’s photographs have been exhibited widely across the South. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Harn Museum of Art, Mississippi Museum of Art, Georgia Museum of Art and other museums. His photographs are also archived in Southern Miss University Libraries’ Special Collections.
For more information, contact Gallery Director Catherine Edmonson. Learn more about the artists at bettypress.com and donnorrisphotography.squarespace.com.
