Alex Webb

New York-based photographer Alex Webb was among the first trio of artists to receive a Picturing the South commission. He had gained renown as one of the earliest photographers to make serious documentary photography and photojournalism in color, particularly his vibrant color photographs about sociopolitical tensions in the Caribbean and Central America.

Over the course of several weeks in the spring of 1996 leading up to the opening of the Olympics, Webb captured the bustle and allure of Atlanta’s downtown streets and suburban sprawl. While he had worked in rural Alabama and Mississippi in the 1970s, he had not yet photographed a major urban center in the region, and he set out to make images that expressed the qualities that made Atlanta the booming cultural and commercial capital of the “New South” and an increasingly international city. He worked intuitively with a small handheld camera loaded with Kodachrome film, wandering the streets of Five Points and expanding out into the surrounding neighborhoods to capture moments of human drama and formal grace. “I like to let my visual experience dictate the direction of the work,” he recalled. “I like my visual knowledge and my intellectual knowledge to grow at the same pace.”

Webb’s frames are layered with visual information and densely packed complex geometry, creating an experience that immerses the viewer in the thick of the activity. Taking advantage of the variously hazy and intense light created by late-afternoon thunderstorms, he strategically contrasted muted tones with pops of vibrant color to elicit the energy of people and cultures colliding and intermingling on crowded urban byways of a city on the rise. Chance and being attuned to the activity surrounding him were key to his improvisational approach; he noted, “The world only gives a street photographer so much, and only occasionally is the photographer fortunate enough to be able to seize it.”

View all works in the commission.