Biography of John Sumner

John Sumner has been photographing the American South for over 25 years. His timeless images are embedded with the hard-labor sweat and red clay that permeate the region. His photographs are populated with Southern people, not just places they inhabit. Sumner is fearless in his approach, capturing people who are obviously unafraid of what this "outsider" might do with the images. Sumner is, after all, not an outsider, but a genteel artifact of the South himself. His style is disarming and obviously effective in his quest to capture his homeland and its people.

From county fairs to local festivals, Sumner fans out from his home base in Atlanta to capture a world that is historically far away, but in reality just down the road from his big-city home. Images of kids riding in the back of pick-up trucks are peppered with the innocent joy that only someone removed from a contemporary life could muster. Decade-weathered faces are perched next to supple newborn skin as generations share the familial bonds that often define the South. The torch is passed from generation to generation as young black and white children play in Atlanta’s Cabbagetown neighborhood, oblivious to the racial strife their parents have witnessed and endured.

From the top of Stone Mountain, where a blanketed girl assumes an angelic persona, to a tree in Piedmont Park where lovers have carved their initials into the base of a birch tree for decades, Sumner is a consummate Southern "witness." His warm-toned fiber prints and Giclee reproductions reveal another way of life.