Background
Birney Imes III was born in 1951 in Columbus, Mississippi. His father, Vinton Birney Imes, Junior., owned the town newspaper, The Commercial Dispatch. His mother is Nancy McClanahan Imes.
- Photos
- Works
- Photos
- Works
book
Juke Joint (Author and Artist Series) by Birney Imes (2012-10-17)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01NCQ2YV6/?tag=2022091-20
Whispering Pines
(For Birney Imes a decaying roadside tavern in rural Missi...)
For Birney Imes a decaying roadside tavern in rural Mississippi has proved to be a rich and enduring source of photographic images. Place and its aura have been Imes's special province, and when as a young man new to photography he first chanced upon Whispering Pines, he was beginning a personal and photographic relationship that would last twenty years. This is where he had his beginnings and, since the mid-1970s, where he has made frequent visits to explore this peculiar microcosm of backwoods America. "It was overwhelming, and it was irresistible, " Imes writes. "The 'Eppie's Eats' sign out front, the rusting cars, the hedge in the parking lot dividing the White Side and the Black Side, and the stuff - it was everywhere inside and out: coin scales, pinball machines, juke boxes, lawn mowers, old campaign posters, newspapers, guns, cigar boxes, and beer signs." This "stuff, " as well as the distinctive proprietor and his clientele, is the subject of the astonishing photographic work collected here. With warmth and humor Imes depicts the outrageous assortment gathered at Whispering Pines - the objects, the people both black and white, the owner Blume C. Triplett, and Triplett's amazing collection of relics. From this memorabilia Imes has produced a series of cigar-box still lifes, each a miniature jewel-like collage that becomes a surprising counterpoint to the photographs he made while the place was in operation. For almost twenty years Whispering Pines, its proprietor, and its clientele provided friendship and a refuge for the photographer, presenting a time-capsule view of a world now vanished. From that experience Imes has given us Whispering Pines, a loving homage to a time, a place and its people.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0878056963/?tag=2022091-20
Juke Joint (Author and Artist Series)
( In this famed collection of full-color photographs, Bir...)
In this famed collection of full-color photographs, Birney Imes reveals a previously unexplored and now nearly vanished domain, the black juke joints of the Mississippi Delta. Imes’s work transforms these common gathering places in Delta cultural life into something rich and strange. The evocative Mississippi place names in Imes’s photographs are as captivating as the names of the juke joints themselves: the Pink Pony in Darling, the People’s Choice Café in Leland, Monkey’s Place in Merigold, the Evening Star Lounge in Shaw, the Playboy Club in Louise, Juicy’s Place in Marcella, the Social Inn in Gunnison, and A. D.’s Place in Glendora. To the volume Richard Ford, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sportswriter and Independence Day, contributes a long, perceptive essay that probes the photographs for their aesthetic value and for what they reveal beyond their obvious documentary qualities. Juke Joint includes approximately sixty photographs taken between 1983 and 1989 as Imes traveled throughout the Delta. Many of the images are the result of long exposures that show the blur of human movement as a figure lounges at a bar or steps across a room to feed quarters into a juke box. The resulting “ghosts” animate the pictures and give them an otherworldly quality. Today, many of these places no longer exist. And yet these photographs continue to inspire songs, poetry, movie sets, and the interior designs of countless bars, restaurants, and live music venues striving for authenticity and that inimitable Delta Blues feeling.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1617036927/?tag=2022091-20
Birney Imes: Juke Joint : Photographs (Hardcover); 2012 Edition
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01FOCVU1Q/?tag=2022091-20
Whispering Pines by Birney Imes (1994-07-01)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N4HYDR6/?tag=2022091-20
Partial to Home: Photographers at Work by Birney Imes (1994-06-30)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01K0SEJIU/?tag=2022091-20
Whispering Pines by Birney Imes (1994-01-30)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01K0V65D4/?tag=2022091-20
Birney Imes
Edit ProfileEducation
He attended desegregated public schools in Columbus and graduated from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville with a Bachelor of Arts degree in History in 1973.
Career
He is best known for his photographs of the American South, especially his home state of Mississippi. His work is exhibited in museums across the United States. Imes began photographing after graduation from college and is largely self-taught.
In the mid-70s, he worked as a photographer for his family"s newspaper in his hometown of Columbus.
Later, he opened his own studio above the Princess Theater in Columbus. Along with his personal work, Imes shot commercial work for local clients and took assignments for magazines like Rolling Stone, The Village Voice and Texas Monthly.
Drawing inspiration from the photographs of other Southern artists like Eudora Welty and William Eggleston, his work concentrates on the American South, especially blacks in the Mississippi Delta. Imes photographs are included in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, both in New York City.
The Art Institute of Chicago.
The Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris and numerous museum and private collections in the United States. His work has been exhibited widely in solo and group shows, including The Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, Louisiana. In 1991 University Press of Mississippi published "Juke Joint," the first of Imes" three books
University Press followed "Juke Joint" with the 1994 publication of "Whispering Pines." That same year Smithsonian Press published a collection of his black and white work, "Partial to Home."
Personal life
They have three children: Peter, John and Tanner.
Works
book
-
Juke Joint (Author and Artist Series)
( In this famed collection of full-color photographs, Bir...)
-
Whispering Pines
(For Birney Imes a decaying roadside tavern in rural Missi...)
- JUKE JOINT: PROMOTIONAL POSTER.
- Juke Joint (Author and Artist Series) by Birney Imes (2012-10-17)
- Birney Imes: Juke Joint : Photographs (Hardcover); 2012 Edition
- Whispering Pines by Birney Imes (1994-07-01)
- Partial to Home: Photographers at Work by Birney Imes (1994-06-30)
- Whispering Pines by Birney Imes (1994-01-30)
-
Juke Joint (Author and Artist Series)
-
Born
-
Nationality
United States