FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

(NEW ORLEANS, LA) – Ogden Museum of Southern Art and Darryl Chappell Foundation are pleased to announce that University of Arkansas’ Aaron Turner has been selected as Darryl Chappell Foundation’s photographer-in-residence at Ogden Museum. Throughout the summer of 2022, Turner will work closely with Ogden Museum’s curatorial department, meeting with Photography Curator Richard McCabe and also with local mentor, photographer L. Kasimu Harris, to grow and foster the resident’s connections and presence within the New Orleans arts community. Apart from meeting with local mentor L. Kasimu Harris, Turner will also be mentored by Houston Texas’, Earlie Hudnall, Jr. This opportunity, provided by Darryl Chappell Foundation, will give Turner the resources to flourish as he navigates the residency. 

Richard McCabe, Curator of Photography, Ogden Museum states “Aaron Turner’s Yesterday Once More series is a nine year exploration into his family’s ties to the rural South. Turner’s photographs, made in Mississippi, Tennessee and Arkansas, align perfectly with the Darryl Chappell Foundation Residency’s focus on supporting photographers living and working in the rural American South. Through his work, Turner gives voice to communities often overlooked within the dialogue of contemporary photography and adds a new perspective to life in the 21st century South.”

The residency will include online educational programming and a solo exhibition at Ogden Museum. In addition, two works of Turner’s will be added to the museum’s permanent collection at the conclusion of his residency.

Turner was selected for his project Yesterday Once More, a project he started in 2013. Using photography, Turner began documenting his hometown, from an insider’s perspective, after seeing photographic work by Eugene Richards. 

“The community I came from is known as the Arkansas Delta,” explains Turner. “But growing up, I was always told I had to prepare myself to leave, and there was nothing for me in the region—socio-economic and cultural issues backed up this viewpoint. I did move for eight years, but I have recently returned to a more permanent role teaching and making art. Out of all of my immediate family members, I am the only one still living in Arkansas. Since 2013, I have focused on portraits of my family and the Arkansas Delta residents (sometimes the Mississippi Delta).”

In recent pursuits of Yesterday Once More, Turner has focused on the landscape to reflect his relationship and understanding of the transformative process to understand place. His central concern is the passage of time, human life, and how from one image to the next, time passes, life goes on, and the artist re-encounters their altered sense of familiarity through people, place and memory. 

This photographer-in-residence program is made possible with the $13,800 grant the Darryl Chappell Foundation awarded Ogden Museum this past summer. A portion of the grant is provided through the generous support of Darryl Chappell Foundation art patron, Nessa Feddis, a prominent attorney in Washington, D.C. Feddis is contributing a gift of $2,500 to support this flagship partnership with the Darryl Chappell Foundation Photographer-in-Residence program.

Aaron Turner’s application was selected out of 47 applications submitted in response to a call for entries. The application was open to Afrodescendants 21+ who had been practicing photography for the past five years with strong consideration being given to photographers living and working in the rural American South.

About Aaron Turner

Aaron Turner is a photographer and educator currently based in Arkansas. He uses photography as a transformative process to understand the ideas of home and resilience in two main areas of the U.S., the Arkansas and Mississippi Deltas. Aaron also uses the 4×5 view camera to create still-life studies on identity, history, blackness as material, and abstraction. Aaron received his M.A. from Ohio University and an M.F.A from Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. He was a 2018 Light Work Artists-in-Residence at Syracuse University, 2019 EnFoco Photography Fellow, a 2020 Visual Studies Workshop Project Space Artists-in-Residence, a 2020 Artist 360 Mid-America Arts Alliance Grant Recipient, the 2021 Houston Center for Photography Fellowship Recipient, and a recipient of the 2021 Creators Lab Photo Fund from Google’s Creator Labs & the Aperture Foundation.

Darryl Chappell Foundation

The Darryl Chappell Foundation seeks to enable Afrodescendant visual artists to achieve their highest potential. The Foundation accomplishes this by sponsoring artist-in-residence programs, by facilitating an Artists Talk series, by issuing unrestricted funding for visual artists and by curating an online Artists  Marketplace featuring artists and their work commission-free.

The core mission of the Foundation is to support aspiring artists who have interest in the visual arts to achieve their dreams and potential of becoming self-supported artists and influencers within their communities. 

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 of more than four thousand works, making it the largest 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 and local craft.

Ogden Museum is open daily from 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. Admission is free to Museum Members and $13.50 for adults, $11 for seniors 65 and older, $6.75 for children ages 5-17 and free for children under 5. The Museum is located at 925 Camp Street, New Orleans, Louisiana 70130. For more information visit ogdenmuseum.org or call 504.539.9650.