The Delta State University Archives and Museum will host an opening reception for its newest exhibit entitled “A Compassionate Eye: Photography of William Anderson” on Sunday, Feb 7, from 2-4 p.m. in the main gallery of the Museum.
For the past four decades, driven by nostalgia and humanitarian concerns, Atlanta photographer William Anderson has documented life among African Americans in the Southeast. His subjects are sharecroppers, rural families, worshippers in ecstatic religious ceremonies and others of humble origin who remind of his childhood in Selma, Alabama.
Whether telling a story, attempting to reveal a hidden truth, or celebrating the beauty of human life, Anderson’s aesthetic sensibility and iconographical themes combine to make a contextualized tapestry of black life. With an intensely, compassionate eye, his images reveal the history of the African American struggle for self-determination
Widely exhibited, Anderson’s black-and white photographs have been acquired by numerous prestigious museums, including the National Gallery of Art, Yale University Art Gallery, Bodleian Library at Oxford University in England, the High Museum of Art, Wadsworth Antheneum Museum of Art, and the J. Paul Getty Museum.
He recently retired as an associate professor at Morehouse College and is a sculptor, painter, printmaker, and musician as well as a photographer.
The exhibit will be available for viewing through April 30. Museum hours are Monday – Thursday, 8 a.m.- noon and 1-5 p.m. and Friday, 8 a.m.- noon and 1-4 p.m.
Both the reception and exhibit are free and open to the public. For more information, please call the Archives office at (662) 846-4780 or visit the Archives website at archives.deltastate.edu.
