Burk Uzzle and J. Lucian Scott at Flanders Gallery

Flanders Gallery, here in Raleigh, is known for its exceptionally strong photography shows. Another one is now up and will have its opening reception this Friday, November 4^th, 2011, with a reception from 6-9 in the evening.

This show features Burk Uzzle, one of North Carolina’s major photographers. Burk was born in Raleigh and after apprenticing with the Raleigh News & Observer, went to work for LIFE Magazine in 1962, at the age of 25, then had a long career with Magnum.  

Burk is best known for his iconic images of the Civil Rights Movement and the Woodstock Music Festival. He now lives and photographs in Wilson, NC.

This show groups a small body of Burk’s work around  issues of serial composition, images in which, for example, a line-up of young children  clasping hands addresses issues of societal norms and personal pride in appearance.  In other images, the natural environment and the manufactured world clash in the meet-up of a pony and rocking horse, or a Prada store sits isolated in the midst of the desert.

The other photographer featured in this show is J. Lucian Scott, born on a  tobacco farm in North Carolina, who now moves between his family farm and his home in Los Angeles.  

This show features work from his Welcome to the Beautiful South portfolio, images that he bases on his experience of a bucolic childhood growing up in the South and as an identical twin, both of which have greatly influenced his work.  

Flanders Gallery says of this work that these “photographs merge figurative elements and classicism with the realities of his life experience, and range from portraiture to landscape and still life.”

I was not aware of Scott’s work, so I am recommending getting to this show and I am putting Scott on my list of Southern Photographers We are Getting to Know.