Baldwin Lee, Untitled,1983-1989, Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Collection of the artist
(NEW ORLEANS, LA) – Ogden Museum of Southern Art is excited to share that Baldwin Lee, a photography exhibition, will open at the Museum on October 5, 2024. Baldwin Lee will feature a selection of over 40 gelatin silver prints culled from thousands of images Lee made across the South in the 1980s, many of these photographs being exhibited for the first time. The exhibition will include compelling portraits of Black Americans, as well as a collection of landscape and cityscape images that visually encapsulate the Reagan-era American South.
Born in 1951 in Brooklyn, New York, Baldwin Lee was raised in Manhattan’s Chinatown. He studied photography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) with renowned American photographer Minor White, and received an MFA from Yale School of Art, where he studied with one of the 20th century’s most celebrated photographers, Walker Evans. After graduating with his MFA, Lee accepted the position of Assistant Professor of Photography at Yale University. In 1982 Lee became the first Director of the Photography Department at the University of Tennessee. The following year, Lee set out from Knoxville with a 4 x 5 view camera on a two-thousand-mile journey of self-discovery photographing his adopted home-land – the American South.
Lee’s artistic goal was to partially re-trace and re-photograph the 1930s-40s routes made across the South by his teacher and mentor Walker Evans. Unlike Evans’ iconic depression-era photographs, Lee would eventually focus on documenting Black Americans, many of whom were living in poverty on the fringes of society. Over the next seven years Lee traveled thousands of miles on the back roads of the South, making over 10,000 photographs – producing one of the most important visual documents of and about the American South in the past half century.
With this body of work, Lee had found his primary subject, and credits his many years of working within Black communities throughout the South as having a “political” effect on his life and art. The compassion Lee felt for those he photographed resonates within his work. Although Lee’s 1980s photographs were known and respected by his fellow photographers and collectors, his work remained largely unknown and under appreciated by the larger public. This would change in 2018, when Barney Kulok, publisher of Hunter’s Point Press, stumbled upon an exhibition at Ogden Museum of Southern Art – One Place Understood: Photographs from The Do Good Fund Collection. The exhibition included 3 photographs by Baldwin Lee. Mesmerized by the power of Lee’s photographs, Kulok immediately reached out to the artist. This chance encounter culminated in the Hunter’s Point Press 2022 publication of “Baldwin Lee,” a book of the artist’s 1980s Southern photographs.
The book, “Baldwin Lee” became an instant classic and the first edition sold out in less than a month. The book was shortlisted as one of the best photo books of 2022 by “Aperture Magazine,” “TIME” and the International Center for Photography. The book’s success led to solo exhibitions at Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York City, Joseph Bellows Gallery, La Jolla, California and David Hill Gallery, London, England. After nearly 40 years, Baldwin Lee is finally being recognized for his groundbreaking work.
Richard McCabe, Curator of Photography, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, shares “Baldwin Lee’s photographs from the 1980s stand today as one of the most important and in-depth visual documents of the 20th century South. Lee’s clarity of vision and humanity resonates within his art and has inspired a new generation of photographers.”
During the run of Baldwin Lee, the book “Baldwin Lee,” will be for sale in the Museum Store. Additionally, the exhibition will have limited addition book inserts for sale to go along with the book. These inserts, made specifically for the exhibition at Ogden Museum, will feature an essay written by curator Richard McCabe, and will incorporate a new set of photographs not included in the original publication.
Baldwin Lee will be on view at Ogden Museum October 5, 2024 through February 16, 2025 and is curated by Richard McCabe, Curator of Photography, Ogden Museum of Southern Art. For press inquiries, please contact Ogden Museum Marketing and Communications Manager, Capri Guarisco (cguarisco@ogdenmuseum.org). More information on special exhibition programming is to be announced.
About Baldwin Lee
Baldwin Lee is a photographer and educator known for his photographs of Black communities in the American South. Lee, a first-generation Chinese American, received a bachelor’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1972) where he studied photography with Minor White, and went on to receive a MFA from Yale University (1975) where he studied with Walker Evans. In 1982, he became a professor of art at the University of Tennessee where he founded the university’s photography program. Lee is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (1984) and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1984 and 1990) and has had solo exhibitions at the Chrysler Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia. His work is held in many private and public collections including Ogden Museum of Southern Art (New Orleans), the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven), the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), The Morgan Library and Museum (New York) and The Nelson-Atkins Museum (Kansas City) among many others. He is represented by Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York City and Joseph Bellows Gallery, La Jolla, California.
About Ogden Museum of Southern Art
Located in the vibrant Warehouse Arts District of downtown New Orleans, Louisiana since 1999 and open to the public since 2003, Ogden Museum of Southern Art invites visitors to experience and learn about the artists and culture of the American South. Ogden Museum is home to a collection with almost five thousand works, making it the largest publicly available and most comprehensive repository dedicated to Southern art in the nation, with particular strength in the genres of Self-Taught art, Regionalism, Photography and Contemporary Art. The Museum is further recognized for its original exhibitions, public events and educational programs, which examine the development of visual art alongside Southern traditions of music, literature, culinary heritage and craft and design.
Ogden Museum is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The Museum is located at 925 Camp Street, New Orleans, Louisiana 70130. For more
information visit ogdenmuseum.org or call 504.539.9650.