The Moviegoer

By Jared Ragland

January 04, 2016

Untitled (Matinee screening of Casablanca, Prytania Theatre, Uptown, New Orleans) | All photographs by Jared Ragland

Artist: Jared Ragland

Project: Everything is Going to Be All Right

Description: Everything is Going to Be All Right, by Jared Ragland, is a photographic meditation on Walker Percy’s classic novel of New Orleans, The Moviegoer. The series documents a distressed urban landscape and imagines an era of the city’s history when single-screen movie theaters dotted New Orleans. Combining traditionally made black-and-white photographs with appropriated imagery, Everything is Going to be All Right—which was originally featured in Eyes on the South in 2014—conveys the artist’s personal search for meaning amid feelings of loss, isolation, alienation, and malaise. Ragland is Binx Bolling with a camera.

Untitled (After Walker Evans’ Movie theater on Saint Charles Street, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1935/6)

Untitled (Matinee screening of Casablanca, Prytania Theatre, Uptown, New Orleans)

Untitled (Resurrection, or Orson Welles in The Third Man)

Untitled (Outside the Joy Theatre, Canal Street, New Orleans)

Untitled (Fifth Discipline, outside the former Dixie Theatre, Central City, New Orleans)

Untitled (House of Wax)

Untitled (Dress)

Untitled (Muses, outside the former Fine Arts Theatre, Uptown, New Orleans)

Untitled (Charlatan)

Untitled (Black Hole)

Untitled (Window, Central City, New Orleans)

Untitled (White Bowler)

Untitled (Billy Collins, Jr.)

Untitled (Loves You, former Robert E. Lee Theatre, Lakefront, New Orleans)

Untitled (Roller Coaster)

Untitled (Clock)

Untitled (Angel of Grief)

Untitled (Suicide)

Untitled (Christ on the Cross, Iberville, New Orleans)

Untitled (William Holden and Grace Kelly as Saint John and Saint Mary)

Untitled (Second Line, or, Rose Tavern, near the Tivoli Theatre, Zion City, New Orleans)

Jared Ragland

Jared Ragland’s work is rooted in his lifelong exposure to the landscapes, people, aesthetics, and storytelling traditions of the American South. A former White House photo editor, Ragland currently teaches at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His upcoming monograph, Everything Is Going To Be All Right, will be published by Communicating Vessels this year. Ragland is a graduate of LaGrange College and holds an MFA from Tulane University. You can find more of his work at jaredragland.com. Follow him on social media at @jaredragland.