From office cubicles to nuclear launch control centers, Minneapolis-based photographer Paul Shambroom has documented various mundane and discrete American locations of power since the mid-1980s. “Picturing Power,” the first overarching survey of his work, is a traveling exhibition now on view at the Atlanta Contemporary. It presents selections from his five major series to date [...]

Last month I visited the airport to see Constance Thalken’s “Purge” photographs. I was interested in seeing art 1) outside of the usual gallery context and 2) outside of my “comfort zone” in downtown or along DeKalb avenue. Plus I was curious: who and what are all these shows “on the fringes” of Atlanta Celebrates [...]

For Southern photographers, there seems an intrinsic need to examine the history of the region. This year’s ACP public art piece, Within Our Gates, is yet another meditation on segregation and the politics of the Civil Rights movement. Artists Bradley McCallum and Jacqueline Tarry, an interracial couple currently based in NYC, attempt to reinvigorate the [...]

Luminous Flux, a street performance directed by Lee Blalock and Bubba Carr As co-founder Cathy Byrd explains, “Le Flash” wasn’t intended to be a carnival of excess: The idea is not at all about chaos, but rather turns around the magical, the poetic, the unexpected, and the fantastical. Byrd’s description—suggesting an air of the otherworldly—applied [...]

Aside from a handful of inspiring performances and clever video installations, Le Flash felt a lot like a normal, though well-attended Fourth Friday in Castleberry Hill. Of course—and I can’t emphasize this enough—the weather was just short of miserable, which to the organizers’ credit, is a risk that comes with any outdoor event. What was [...]

Wendy Given‘s The Wilds—one of two photo series in her Solomon Projects show, “No Man’s Land”—works on two separate narrative planes. On one hand, we have the story of Given and her husband, who’ve searched exhaustively for specific landscapes throughout the forests of the Pacific Northwest. Given’s husband then assumes a form appropriate to Given’s [...]

When I arrived at last week’s Art Papers lecture at Emory, I didn’t realize I was already familiar with the work of photographer Joan Fontcuberta. He spoke of his career as an art world jester who—without informing his audiences of his duplicity—stages completely fake exhibitions.

Peter Bahouth‘s series “Sadie’s Choice” is part of a larger project in which the Atlanta-based artist revisits historic uses of stereoscopic photography; 1950s pin-up and glamour photography inspired this particular series. Though I expected three-dimensional works when I walked into Marcia Wood Gallery, I nevertheless was surprised by an all-white room that was bare except [...]

Train Panorama, Glenwood Avenue, 2008 (polyptych) Meryl Truett’s “Picturing the Beltline” debuts alongside the first Great American economic meltdown in decades. As Atlanta BeltLine, Inc. faces renewed financial uncertainty, I can’t help but marvel. Truett—a SCAD professor and veteran photographer—can turn rust into rubies; she has an eye for architectural oddities and strikingly desolate landscapes. [...]

Martha Rosler has seamlessly fused the Dada aesthetic of Hannah Höch with social commentary comparable to Barbara Kruger. Her current show at the Emory Visual Arts Gallery displays her original “Bringing the War Home” series from 1967-1972, documenting the Vietnam War, as well as the more recent “Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful” series from [...]

Two series by German photographer Jan Van Holleben are on view at the Marcia Wood Gallery: “It Will Happen Here” and “Dreams of Flying.”

Two recent exhibitions explore an icon of contemporary art, the found object as aesthetic artifact: Danielle Aseff’s “Estate Salese: Everything Must Go” at West Egg Café and William Boling’s “You Ain’t Wrong” at Hagedorn Foundation Gallery.