The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own. I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before. In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find. Please DO NOT send me your work. I do not take submissions.
Today’s featured artist: Kate Medley
This body of documentary photographs examines the role of gas stations throughout the South, using these spaces as a lens to study this complex region, the people who live here, and how the populations and priorities of these people are shifting. In a time when our politics are increasingly polarized, our neighborhoods segregated, and our rhetoric strained, still nearly everyone regularly passes through these same commercial spaces. We come together here almost out of necessity, or at least convenience. My images give particular due to the culture and people in these communities—the workers who sustain these gas stations and the customers who rely on them for fuel, food, essential goods, and community. This project puts expressed emphasis on emerging immigrant foodways launching from gas station kitchens—the cuisines of one’s native country and how that is merging with more traditional flavors of the American South, shifting the very definition of what is Southern food. I highlight the egalitarian nature of the gas station, integral to the lives of people in every socioeconomic bracket in the South, especially in rural areas. Spanning more than ten years, this project touches down in 11 southern states, documents more than one hundred gas stations, and features a diverse mix of portraits, scene-setters, details, and documentary images.
To see more of this project, click here
Available for purchase, click here
I feature personal projects so your work can be seen. It is so nice to see this project get so much press (I found her in a CNN article and reached out to her). This is the press she has gotten already for this personal project https://www.katemedley.com/news
APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration advertising and in-house corporate industry for decades. After establishing the art-buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. Follow her at @SuzanneSease. Instagram
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