Kenny Gray – “My Southside”

Mythmaker

By Mamie Pound

Every photograph you see is a document of 1/100th of a second. The photographer engages the shutter to capture what’s in front of him, and for that brief moment, he is blind. The result is the product of a chain reaction, only set in motion by the photographer once he pushes that button.

It’s a bit of performance art – magic really, according to Kenny Gray, whose collection, “My Southside,” will be available to view at the Do Good Fund Gallery August 10th through September 28th. I asked Kenny what inspired him to become a photographer.

“In the late sixties, there was a show at the Museum of Modern Art curated by John Szarkowski,”he says. It featured then-unknown artists, Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand. It was called “New Documents.” It was arguably the first time that vernacular photography, personal photography, was considered art.”

Kenny says he started taking photographs as a serious art form in 1977. Back then. the process was analog and required film and a darkroom. He describes the process as frustrating, citing the limitations of manipulating the images. “They were always compromised,” he says. There was no Photoshop. But with the advent of digital photography and digital editing systems, many of those problems went away. Kenny embraced the shift. “It’s the perfect marriage of capture capability and technology,” he says. By 1998 he’d fully switched to digital. “With digital, all the barriers disappeared.”

When asked if photographs are fact or fiction, he says he considers them a fiction. “A photograph lacks our 360-degree world of three dimensional sounds and smells,” he says. In other words, it lacks a certain context. Kenny says the interaction between photographer and subject always affects the final result, creating something that’s not quite a representation of reality. It’s part of the process. I got the impression it’s not necessarily conscious, but it is inevitable. Even in that 1/100th of a second, something is captured that will change slightly in another half second.

When Kenny moved back to southside Columbus in the late seventies, he was inspired by its people and their circumstances. He recognized the beauty and intrinsic specialness of the days and nights of everyday life, and in the characters who live their lives in those spaces. This is evident in the fragile, fleeting glimpses of vulnerability in the photos in “My Southside.” In each tiny window of time, there’s fear and hope, pride and brazenness. He must have been within arms’ reach of some of his subjects. In the photograph, “Santa’s Helpers, Christmas Parade,” the candid shot reveals a hundred different impressions of high school cheerleaders. They’re at once distracted, bored, hopeful, preening. The image is unique and universal.

I asked Kenny what makes a great photograph. He said, “It asks questions rather than provides answers. It makes me want to know what happened right before and right after.” The worst art is sentimental, he says, it overexplains, tells you exactly what you should be thinking. “I want my audience to bring the meaning. I don’t want to provide it.” The real power of photography, according to Kenny, is in the fact that people believe. They bring their experiences to the picture.

Kenny says he’s not doing serious photography nowadays. He’s given himself over to writing, of fiction, screenplay, and poetry. Poetry, he says, might be most similar to photography for its metaphoric quality. In poetry as well as photography, you need only a suggestion to evoke a million sensations. According to him, ambiguity is a heavy lifter. Something seemingly small and unimportant can provoke a powerful response. He told me a story about Bruce Springsteen and how he’d always introduce Steve Van Zandt as “Miami Steve Van Zandt.” Someone interviewed Bruce and asked why he always referred to him as Miami. Springsteen responded, “Because he went to Florida one time.” It takes very little to create a myth.

The images of “My Southside,” are similarly mythical. They suggest a time and a place that’s long gone. It can’t be fact, Kenny says. It’s only a two-dimensional representation. You can’t smell the car exhaust, can’t feel the cold December wind of the Christmas parade, the uncertainty of a high school sophomore. You can’t know the pride of a tattooed, shirtless man standing beside a Cadillac with a shellacked alligator on its roof. You can’t hear the cush of the leather seat in which Phyllis sits, just outside the Domino Lounge smoking a Pall Mall.

Or can you?

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What they’re saying about Kenny Gray and his ‘My Southside’ show:

Alan Rothschild, Jr.
Attorney, Founder of the Do Good Fund

“I have always been interested in the process of photography since working on Brookstone School’s student newspaper in the 1970’s. Kenny’s darkroom workshops rekindled that interest following my return to Columbus after law school. It also began a friendship built on a shared interest in photography.

Kenny’s ‘My Southside’ series fits squarely in the Do Good Fund’s mission of sharing visual stories of the American South. With the activation of the Do Good Gallery three years ago, Do Good has been able to expand its work beyond just building a permanent collection of images to share with other institutions. The Gallery provides us the opportunity to exhibit both work in the permanent collection and loaned work for the enjoyment of Columbus residents and visitors to our community.

The upcoming ‘My Southside’ exhibition is another in a series of recent exhibitions featuring local artists – both photographers, like Henry Jacobs from LaGrange, and those working in other mediums, such as recently exhibited artists Cathy & Fred Fussell and Butch Anthony. A few years ago, Kenny contacted us to come over to his Uptown space to look at some prints he’d just made. These were the images from My Southside. I knew immediately that Do Good needed to find a way to help share Kenny’s beautiful series more broadly. We are so excited that with the support of Kenny and the CSU Archives that it has finally come together.

Columbus State University has been a long time partner with The Do Good Fund. Art professor Hannah Israel played a critical role in our very first exhibition over ten years ago, and photography professor Rylan Steele has been a strategic advisor and sounding board on many of our acquisitions and exhibitions. We’ve also collaborated with CSU Art on a number of visiting artists and guest lectures, and an image in the Do Good collection by CSU Art graduate Peyton Fulford was recently selected by the High Museum of Art[Atlanta] for its major Southern photography show that is now on tour.”

Andy Carpenter
Writer / Filmmaker

“Kenny has an eye and mind to push limits, find them along the edges in” his writing and photographs. Sometimes, I wish Kenny lived in a bigger city where he could have more room to share his work and find an audience that wants to find those limits with him. Kenny is precise, patient, and willing to offer insight and share his knowledge, but never attempts to supersede someone else’s vision. I have appreciated his eye and steadfast assistance on our movie locations in many facets. Kenny is a humble talent, and that’s my highest compliment.”

Paul Rowe
Producer / Filmmaker

“Aside from Kenny’s impact to the local and beyond art world in any number of mediums, for me personally he has been hugely important in my journey in the screenwriting and filmmaking world. He started the Rankin Screenwriters, a group which exposed many of us budding local screenwriters to one another and for me has had immeasurable impact that eventually led into filmmaking where

Kenny and I have worked together in a variety of capacities. It’s funny working on set with him as he’ll make a suggestion and it’s so heavy with humility that it could be easy to miss until you think about it and whatever he’s saying is so profoundly helpful to whatever we’re needing ideas on or when he sees something no one else does — that’s experiences, that’s an artist, that’s the legend, Kenny Gray.”