HUGER FOOTE | The Sun Inside the Evening

Something happens every time I return to Memphis. It begins with a feeling in my bones as I am packing and heading out the door, taking those first steps south, then comes a pleasant jolt as I board the plane and find myself surrounded again by the music of southern voices. The transition is more subtle if I am driving, first a peaceful feeling as I cross the mountains, then a calm, a sense of familiarity coupled with an alertness, an awakened part of me that begins to scrutinize and examine the surfaces of things.

These photographs were created specifically for this exhibition, a look at a wide spectrum of life -- pastoral and urban, morning, noon, and night.

I see photographs that need to be taken, colors juxtaposed perfectly that just need framing to find their proper order. I can’t say precisely what causes this mental shift; perhaps it is that I am headed back to the place of my birth and childhood. Memory must also inform this heightened state —a parade of loved ones gone whose images become clearer again in my mind as I get closer to home.

I get tuned in and dedicated to looking, letting the pictures lead me along to new ideas for composition and color. Avoiding thesis, I let an internal eye do the choosing; I stay open and allow myself be drawn to places and things that move me.

The pictures reveal what I am seeking, a hidden story emerging from this land of ghosts, rivers, and sky.

I see joy too, a reveling in the bright beauty that surrounds me. I am glad for it, this delight in becoming present, letting the past slip away, getting lost for an instant in a sort of dance of shapes and color and light and looking. Then it’s gone, the moment fades, and the world crowds in. But the photographs remain, capturing the feeling of that experience, that light, that glimpse of an ineffable mystery.

Avoiding thesis, I let an internal eye do the choosing; I stay open and allow myself be drawn to places and things that move me.

Beyond even memory is a connection to those before my time, who no doubt played an equal part in my making, a century of forebearers whose presence is close at hand, the emotional and physical resonance of the past.

Huger Foote was born in Memphis and received his BFA from Sarah Lawrence College. After traveling extensively and living abroad for several years, he now splits time between Memphis and upstate New York. His work has been shown internationally in exhibitions from Memphis to London, New York to Brussels, and beyond, and is featured in many public and private collections around the globe. His fashion photography and editorial work has been published in the New York Times, Interview, Details, i-D, American Vogue, British Vogue, French Vogue, American Elle, The Observer, Vanity Fair, Spin, Contents, and The Washington Post Magazine.

Monographs of his work were published in 2000 and 2015. He lives in Memphis and Upstate New York.

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