Birney Imes, C Print Color Photo Mississippi Juke Joint Photograph African American Americana, 1986,,,

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BIRNEY IMES, Mississippi, b. 1951 "Riverside Lounge, Shaw, 1986" Dimensions: Chromogenic print, 14" x 16.5" sight. Framed 21" x 25". … Read more BIRNEY IMES, Mississippi, b. 1951 "Riverside Lounge, Shaw, 1986" Dimensions: Chromogenic print, 14" x 16.5" sight. Framed 21" x 25". Birney Imes (born 1951) is an American photographer. He is best known for his photographs of the American South, especially his home state of Mississippi. His work is exhibited in museums across the United States. Birney Imes III was born in 1951 in Columbus, Mississippi. His father, Vinton Birney Imes, Jr., owned the town newspaper, The Commercial Dispatch. His mother is Nancy McClanahan Imes. He attended desegregated public schools in Columbus and graduated from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville with a Bachelor of Arts degree in History in 1973. Growing up white in the South during the Civil Rights Movement helped shape his views on history and that is where his photography career originated from. Imes began photographing after graduation from college and is largely self-taught. In the mid-70s, he worked as a photographer for his family's newspaper in his hometown of Columbus. Later, he opened his own studio above the Princess Theater in Columbus. Along with his personal work, Imes shot commercial work for local clients and took assignments for magazines like Rolling Stone, The Village Voice and Texas Monthly. His work has been printed in both black and white silver gelatin and color photos. Birney Imes’ photography takes viewers inside pool halls, jazz spots, juke joints and dilapidated restaurants scattered across that rural Mississippi landscape. Drawing inspiration from the photographs of other Southern artists like Eudora Welty and William Eggleston, his work concentrates on the American South, especially blacks in the Mississippi Delta. Vinton Birney Imes III is a photographer whose endeavors have included commercial and studio photography and photojournalism. Museum collections in the United States and France contain his photographs. From coast to coast, galleries and museums have exhibited his pictures. His work has appeared alongside that of other fine American photographers, including Walker Evans, Margaret Bourke-White, Clarence John Laughlin, and Robert Frank. In 1991 University Press of Mississippi published "Juke Joint," the first of Imes' three books. University Press followed "Juke Joint" with the 1994 publication of "Whispering Pines." That same year Smithsonian Press published a collection of his black and white work, "Partial to Home." Birney Imes' photography is also included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York city, (he was included in the show Photography: Recent Acquisitions along with Robert Adams, Joe Deal, Robert Frank, Paul Graham, Baldwin S. Lee, Thomas Roma, Judith Joy Ross, Sheron Rupp, JoAnn Verburg and Neil Winokur) Imes photographs are included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris and numerous museum and private collections in the United States. His work has been exhibited widely in solo and group shows, including The Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, Louisiana. In 1985 he received the National Endowment Art Fellowship Grant. See less