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A good life will have structure, order and tradition but a great life will also include moments of serendipity, music and magic. This image SNOW by Jo Lynn Still for me represents the great life. I started to look at Jo Lynn’s photographs at Atlanta Celebrates Photography in 2006 and our paths crossed over the years, but I could not find a way to contact her until Facebook and while flipping through her many fine photographs this one stopped me. I knew that I wanted it in my southern show and over time it moved to center stage. How can snow be a southern memory, ask any child that has looked out of a window in wonder, ask any child that has run and laughed for an hour with cold crystals falling all around in an alien landscape. One of my primal memories as a child was my first snow in the fifties in Birmingham Alabama my parents brought me my first Brownie Camera. We made a sad snowman …. This is a happy photograph, we look up at a brilliant blue sky our heads tilted back, maybe our tongues are trying to catch the snow. Flakes and laughter brushing against our cheeks — what a memory because it is all gone, fleeting except for this picture at this moment.
From Jo Lynn….I am Jo Lynn Still , a mostly self-taught photographer and a self-described emotional shooter. I was born and raised in what was once called the Kaolin Capital of The World: Washington County, Georgia. I will always call this place home. One of my goals as an artist is to prove that success can be obtained from a rural location. This will take meeting individuals that have access to the art world outside of my comfort zone. Portfolio reviews are invaluable sources of contacts and critique. I have made a wonderful contact and friend through a portfolio review and a Slow Exposures photography salon. Several years ago at my first portfolio review I met Manhattan based John A. Bennette: curator, collector and critic . His honest critique of my work encouraged me to keep shooting. I thank him for that particular 20 minutes of attention back in 2006. And I especially thank him for including 3 of my images in his “Southern Memories:Part One” exhibition. This opportunity is payoff for years of shooting. I seldom arrange the subjects of my images and I can easily lose inspiration if I get bogged down in technique. Some believe this is a weakness and I will be the first to agree that I’m just not that good at producing a “perfect photograph”. John’s eye sees beyond my short-comings and that feels great! It’s similar to the feeling I had while photographing our snow-fall in February 2010. Snow can make a southerner revert to childhood in a flash. For me, snow conjures images of getting out of school early, rushing to the grocery store to get bread and milk before the shelves were empty and playing for hours in what little snow fell. The milk, of course, was for making snow ice cream. One of my photographs John chose for the exhibition is SNOW. If you look at SNOW and imagine that I was dancing around in the woods with my camera, randomly pointing it towards the sky and laughing, you are correct. A combination of emotion and equipment produced an image of sheer happiness frozen in time (no pun intended). I am excited about the exhibition. I look forward to meeting photography fans and fellow photographers. Thank you John A. Bennette and Slow Exposures Photography