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Baldwin Lee

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  • ← CURRENTS 2023: A New Orleans Photo Alliance Member Showcase
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Baldwin Lee


Baldwin Lee, Untitled, 1983-1989, Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Collection of the artist


October 5, 2024 - February 16, 2025

Supporting Sponsors

The Helis Foundation
Charles D. Urstadt Chairman Emeritus Acquisition Fund
Shirley Rabé Masinter Fund
Stuart B. Hurt
Risk Strategies

Host Committee:

Alexa Georges & Jerry Armatis
Dr. & Mrs. Ted Bloch III
Sesthasak Boonchai
Kaye Courington
Jan W. Katz & Jim Derbes
Eclectic Home
Dr. & Mrs. Don Norris
Alan Rothschild
Warwick & Jessica Sabin
Brian Sands
Jennie Cannon West & Jason Richards
Carla & Cleophus Thomas
Troy Scroggins & Frank Wilder

Contributor:

Debra J. Fischman
Charles M. Lovell

Support Baldwin Lee
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Baldwin Lee was born in Brooklyn, New York and raised in Manhattan’s Chinatown. He studied photography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) with photographer Minor White. Later, he would receive an MFA from Yale School of Art, where he studied with photographer Walker Evans. In 1982, Lee became the first Director of Photography within the Art department at the University of Tennessee. The following year, he set out from Knoxville with a 4 x 5 view camera on a journey of self-discovery photographing his adopted homeland – 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 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 crisscrossing the South, making nearly 10,000 photographs – producing one of the most important visual documents of and about the American South in the past half century.

With this 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, until recently this work has remained largely unknown and under-appreciated by a wider public.

In the fall of 2022, Hunter’s Point Press published “Baldwin Lee,” a book consisting of the artist’s 1980s Southern photographs. The book has since become an instant classic and was shortlisted as one of the best photo books of 2022 by “Aperture Magazine,” “TIME” and the International Center for Photography. The first edition of “Baldwin Lee” sold out in less than a month and is presently on its third edition of publication. 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.

The exhibition Baldwin Lee features a selection of over 50 gelatin silver prints culled from thousands of images Lee made across the South in the 1980s, with many of the photographs being exhibited for the first time. The exhibition includes compelling portraits of Black Americans, as well as a collection of landscape, cityscape and still-life images that visually encapsulate the Reagan-era American South.


About Baldwin Lee

Walker Evans, (Baldwin Lee) December 10, 1973, 1973, Instant internal dye diffusion transfer print (Polaroid SX-70), 11 x 14 inches (framed), Collection of the artist

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 byHoward Greenberg Gallery, New York City and Joseph Bellows Gallery, La Jolla, California.

 


Curated Conversation


Shop the Exhibition


GALLERY

Baldwin Lee, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1983, Vintage gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Collection of the artist
Baldwin Lee, Natchez, Mississippi, 1984, Vintage gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Collection of the artist, Courtesy of Joseph Bellows Gallery
Baldwin Lee, Columbia, South Carolina, 1984, Vintage gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Collection of the artist, Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Baldwin Lee, Untitled, 1983-1989, Vintage gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Collection of the artist, Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Baldwin Lee, Untitled, 1983-1989, Vintage gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Collection of the artist, Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Baldwin Lee, Montgomery, Alabama, 1984, Vintage gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Collection of the artist, Courtesy of Joseph Bellows Gallery
Baldwin Lee, Boyle, Mississippi, 1985, Vintage gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Collection of the artist, Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Baldwin Lee, Monroe, Louisiana, 1984, Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Collection of the artist
Baldwin Lee, Monroe, Louisiana, 1983, Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20, Collection of the artist
Baldwin Lee, Savannah, Georgia, C. 1984, Vintage gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Collection of the artist, Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Baldwin Lee, Untitled, 1983-1989, Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Collection of the artist
Baldwin Lee, Montgomery, Alabama, 1984, Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Collection of the artist
Baldwin Lee, Untitled, 1983-1989, Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Collection of the artist
Baldwin Lee, Vicksburg, Mississippi, 1983, Gelatin silver print, 20 X 16 inches, Collection of the artist
Baldwin Lee, Lakeland, Florida, 1984, Vintage gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Collection of the artist, Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Baldwin Lee, Richmond, Virginia, 1986, Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Collection of the artist
Baldwin Lee, Untitled, 1983-1989 Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Collection of the artist
Baldwin Lee, Vicksburg, Mississippi, 1984, Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Collection of the artist
Baldwin Lee, Waterproof, LA, 1986, Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20, Collection of the artist
Baldwin Lee, Lula, Mississippi, 1984, Vintage gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Collection of the artist, Courtesy of Joseph Bellows Gallery
Baldwin Lee, Nashville, Tennessee, 1983, Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Collection of the artist
Baldwin Lee, Columbia, South Carolina, 1984, Vintage gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Collection of the artist, Courtesy of Joseph Bellows Gallery
Baldwin Lee, Vicksburg, Mississippi, 1984, Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Collection of the artist
Baldwin Lee, Untitled, 1983-1989, Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Collection of the artist
Baldwin Lee, Untitled, 1983-1989, Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Collection of the artist
Baldwin Lee, Plain Dealing, Louisiana, 1984, Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Collection of the artist
Baldwin Lee, Monroe, Louisiana, 1985, Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Collection of the artist
Baldwin Lee, Mobile, Alabama, 1985, Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Collection of the artist
Baldwin Lee, Charleston, South Carolina, 1984, Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Collection of the artist
Baldwin Lee, Untitled, 1983-1989, Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Collection of the artist
Baldwin Lee, Untitled, 1983-1989, Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Collection of the artist
Baldwin Lee, Defuniak Springs, Florida, 1984, Gelatin Silver Print, 16 x 20 inches, Collection of the Artist
Baldwin Lee, Untitled, 1983-1989, Gelatin Silver Print, 16 x 20 inches, Collection of the Artist
Baldwin Lee, Rosedale, Mississippi, 1984, Archival pigment print, 40 x 50 inches, Collection of the artist
Baldwin Lee, Valdosta, Georgia, 1985, Archival pigment print, 40 x 50 inches, Collection of the artist
Baldwin Lee, Chattanooga, Tennessee, 1983, Vintage gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches Collection of the artist
Baldwin Lee, Monroe, Louisiana, 1985, Vintage gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Collection of the artist
Baldwin Lee, Untitled, 1983-1989, vintage gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Collection of the artist, Courtesy of Joseph Bellows Gallery
Baldwin Lee, Bessemer, Alabama, 1987, Vintage gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Collection of the artist
Baldwin Lee, Clarksdale, Mississippi, 1984, Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches Gift of Baldwin and Maureen Lee, 2024.30.4
Baldwin Lee, Natchez, Mississippi, 1983, Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Gift of Baldwin and Maureen Lee, 2024.30.3
Baldwin Lee, Untitled, 1983-1989, Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Gift of Baldwin and Maureen Lee 2024.30.12
Baldwin Lee, Untitled, 1983-1989, Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Gift of Baldwin and Maureen Lee, 2024.30.16
Baldwin Lee, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1984, Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Gift of Baldwin and Maureen Lee, 2024.30.5
Baldwin Lee, Rosedale, Mississippi, 1985, Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Museum Purchase with Funds Provided by The Charles D. Urstadt Chairman Emeritus Acquisition Fund, 2024.28.1
Baldwin Lee, Shreveport, Louisiana, 1983-1989, Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches,
Baldwin Lee, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1983, Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Gift of Baldwin and Maureen Lee, 2024.30.2
Baldwin Lee, Untitled, 1983-1989, Gelatin silver print, 20 x 16 inches, Gift of Baldwin and Maureen Lee, 2024.30.19
Baldwin Lee, Untitled, 1983-1989, Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Gift of Baldwin and Maureen Lee, 2024.30.24

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