Artist: Michael Wriston

Project: Ask and it Shall Be Given to You

Description: Michael Wriston’s photographs, as he writes, come from “a three-year exploration of dirt roads, city streets, and wild countryside.” The images in his project, Ask and it Shall Be Given to You, traverse the often unseen, rural corners of Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina, capturing the stillness and vivid life of small towns, their residents, and the land that holds them. As seen in Wriston’s work—where an alligator retreats languidly through a swamp, and a lone sapling grows from a barn’s split roof, and a man, bracketed by the open hoods of cars, poses proudly over a string of jumper cables—the juxtaposition of the public and the personal, the natural and the man-made, resounds. This clash of elements, Wriston suggests, informs an aesthetic meant to breathe nuance and reconciliation into a South that is often burdened by the clichés and false dichotomies of rural existence.

Eyes on the South&\#xA0;is curated by&\#xA0;Jeff Rich. The weekly series features selections of current work from Southern artists, or artists whose photography concerns the South. To submit your work to the series, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..