Birney Imes (born 1951) is an American photographer. He is best known for his photographs of the

American South The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, or simply the South) is a geographic and cultural region of the United States of America. It is between the Atlantic Ocean ...

, especially his home state of Mississippi. His work is exhibited in museums across the United States.

Biography

Early life

Birney Imes III was born in 1951 in

Columbus, Mississippi Columbus is a city in and the county seat of Lowndes County, on the eastern border of Mississippi, United States, located primarily east, but also north and northeast of the Tombigbee River, which is also part of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterwa ...

.Grover Lewis
Juke Joints, Roadhouses and Southern Parables : The Documentary Lyricism of Photographer Birney Imes
'' Los Angeles Times'', August 07, 1994Judith H. Bonner (ed.), ''New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture'', Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, Volume 21, 201

/ref> 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.

Career

Imes began photographing after graduation from college and is largely self-taught. In the mid-70s,birneyimes 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.'' Drawing inspiration from the photographs of other Southern artists like Eudora Welty and

William Eggleston William Eggleston (born July 27, 1939) is an American photographer. He is widely credited with increasing recognition for color photography as a legitimate artistic medium. Eggleston's books include ''William Eggleston's Guide'' (1976) and ''The ...

, his work concentrates on the American South, especially blacks in the

Mississippi Delta The Mississippi Delta, also known as the Yazoo–Mississippi Delta, or simply the Delta, is the distinctive northwest section of the U.S. state of Mississippi (and portions of Arkansas and Louisiana) that lies between the Mississippi and Yazoo ...

.Robert Smith
n Eye for the Essential : Imes' subjects may be aware of the photographer, but they don't mind him being there
''Los Angeles Times'', September 11, 1994 Imes photographs are included in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, both in New York City; 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 The Center for Creative Photography (CCP), established in 1975 and located on the University of Arizona's Tucson campus, is a research facility and archival repository containing the full archives of over sixty of the most famous American pho ...

at the University of Arizona, and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, Louisiana. 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."

Personal life

He lives in

with his wife Beth. They have three children: Peter, John and Tanner.

Bibliography

*''Juke Joint'' (Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 1990).University Press of Mississippi
/ref> *''Whispering Pines'' (Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 1994). *''Partial to Home'' (Smithsonian Press, 1994).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Imes, Birney Living people 1951 births People from Columbus, Mississippi American photographers Businesspeople from Mississippi