A Place of Wonder

Fourteen years of seeing the South with The Do Good Fund

By Monica Jones

A photograph of a river baptism might bring someone back to their childhood church. Another image might recall a relative, a roadside encounter or a place that has changed beyond recognition. Someone else will notice the light, the composition or the way a photographer caught an otherwise fleeting moment.

At The Do Good Fund, all of those responses belong in the room.

“All of a sudden, you’re just telling stories,” says Hallie Fivecoat, collection manager for The Do Good Fund.

For anyone unfamiliar with the name, The Do Good Fund is a Columbus-based nonprofit that collects and shares photography of the American South. Its Uptown gallery is free to visit, and its work extends well beyond those walls: the organization lends photographs to museums, nonprofit galleries and other community spaces, making art accessible to more people.

That mission comes into focus in A Place of Wonder, an exhibition bringing together 70 photographs by 66 photographers from the collection. On view through December 12, the show celebrates 14 years of collecting and sharing Southern photography, inviting visitors to spend time with a region that can feel deeply familiar and still surprise them.

Founded in 2012, The Do Good Fund has built a collection of 895 images made in the South since World War II. Its holdings include work by more than 20 Guggenheim Fellows alongside photographs by emerging and lesser-known artists. Visitors can experience that museum-quality collection right here in Columbus, without buying a ticket.

The exhibition’s breadth reaches from Do Good’s first acquisition to some of its most recent additions, offering a chance to consider both the collection’s breadth and the many ways photographers have understood Southern life.

The installation encourages exploration. Visitors familiar with the gallery’s usually restrained arrangements will find a fuller presentation, with photographs placed in conversation across the walls.

“We really tried to put the show together in a way where the works speak to each other,” Fivecoat says. “So the stories kind of help amplify each other, complement each other.”

Fitting so much into the space required thoughtful choices about what belonged beside what, and how one image might lead a visitor toward another. The result gives people plenty of reasons to linger, look again and follow their own connections.

People, Places and Spirits provide the exhibition’s organizing themes. Together, they leave room for the South’s landscapes and personalities, its traditions and contradictions, and the beliefs that shape how people live.

The “Spirits” theme encompasses a range of expressions of faith, including river baptisms and snake handling. Spiritual life is woven into Southern culture, but its forms can be intensely personal.

“People’s interest in really proclaiming their faith in whatever form that shows itself,”  is part of what characterizes the region, she says, 

Across the exhibition, recognition can coexist with questions. A familiar scene may carry details a visitor has never considered. An unfamiliar experience may reveal something unexpectedly close to home. As the exhibition’s statement puts it, the challenge is to let wonder coexist with discomfort.

The title draws inspiration from Lonnie Holley’s song “Back for Me,” connecting the exhibition to an understanding of humanity which holds joy and difficulty together. No single image is asked to define the South. The range of perspectives is part of the point.

Visitors need no background in photography to take part in that conversation.

“It’s images that people kind of see every day,” says Emma Gaines, who assists with marketing for The Do Good Fund. “Places and people, imagery they will recognize, and it’s familiar to them.”

A photographer might study the print, recognize a camera format or examine how an image was made. Someone else might immediately begin telling a family story. Fivecoat welcomes that wide range of encounters with the work, from an appreciation of its technical qualities to a personal connection with the subject.

A Place of Wonder also marks a transition for the organization. It will be Do Good’s final exhibition in its current gallery space as the fund reorganizes and looks toward more opportunities to share the collection throughout the community and beyond.

Exhibitions, visiting artists and collaborations remain part of that future. Before establishing a gallery, Do Good spent years presenting pop-up shows and placing work in other venues. That experience provides a foundation for what comes next.

Fivecoat has begun exploring possibilities with libraries, including smaller community branches, and considering potential locations in surrounding communities such as Pine Mountain and Hamilton. Suitable spaces must be able to protect the photographs, but the ambition is broad: let more people encounter the collection in the course of their own lives.

“There are people who would probably love to see these kinds of images that don’t go to places like this,” she says.

Bringing the photographs into those settings could open conversations with people who might never plan a gallery visit, yet recognize themselves, their families or their communities in the images.

Trying to find people where they are, Fivecoat says, is what Do Good wants to pursue more fully.

For now, the Uptown gallery offers a generous opportunity to experience that mission: 70 photographs, 66 artists and countless ways to see a place we share.

A Place of Wonder is on view through December 12 at The Do Good Fund Gallery, 111 12th Street in Uptown Columbus. 

A free public reception takes place Thursday, November 5, from 6–8 p.m. Regular gallery hours are Wednesday–Friday, 1–5 p.m., and Saturday, 10 a.m.–3 p.m. Admission is free.