1960Now: Atlanta, Baltimore, Ferguson & Washington DC

Sheila Pree Bright

“As I observe the state of our country, I feel art can be a form of activism as it brings shared communities to critically look at ongoing struggles effecting our social conditions from state to state.” —Sheila Pree Bright

In 2012 while photographing the unknown living leaders of the Civil Rights movement, Sheila Pree Bright made a connection between now and the climate of the 1960s. This connection inspired her public art series 1960Who. Her latest series,1960Now, is an evolution in Bright’s exploration through her lens of the Civil Rights Movement. Thus far, this project has taken Bright to Atlanta, Selma 50th Anniversary, Baltimore, Ferguson and Washington D.C where she was on the ground documenting the Black Lives movement.  A selection of images from 1960Now: Atlanta, Baltimore, Ferguson & Washington DC will be presented at Flux Night 2015: Dream.

About the Artist

Sheila Pree Bright is an Atlanta-based, award-winning fine-art photographer nationally known for her photographic series Young Americans, Plastic Bodies, and Suburbia. In the art world, Bright is described as a ‘cultural anthropologist’ portraying large-scale works that combine a wide-range of contemporary culture. Bright received national attention shortly after earning a M.F.A. in Photography from Georgia State University in 2003. She was awarded the Center Prize from the Santa Fe Center of Photography for Suburbia in 2006, and in 2013, Bright’s Plastic Bodies series went viral on Huffington Post when it was featured as a trending topic on the publication’s ‘Art and Culture’ page. Plastic Bodies also appeared in an important documentary, Through the Lens Darkly, which explores the important role of black photographers. The indie art documentary premiered at Sundance Film Festival January 2014.