ExhibitionsMark Steinmetz: Terminus
Past Exhibition

Mark Steinmetz: Terminus

March 3 – June 24, 2018

,

Photo by Mark Steinmetz of a woman sitting outside the Atlanta airport in 2016.

Mark Steinmetz (American, born 1961), Untitled, 2016, gelatin silver print. Courtesy of the artist and Jackson Fine Art, Atlanta, Georgia. © Mark Steinmetz

,

Black-and-white photo of wet airport runways in the fog.

Mark Steinmetz (American, born 1961), Untitled, 2015, gelatin silver print. Courtesy of the artist and Jackson Fine Art, Atlanta, Georgia. © Mark Steinmetz

For the past few years, artist Mark Steinmetz has photographed in, around, and above Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, through which approximately 100,000,000 passengers, 1,000,000 flights, and 650,000 tons of cargo pass every year. Using the world’s most heavily trafficked airport as his home base, Steinmetz closely considers the activity and interactions that take place at this crossroads of the contemporary South. The exhibition is comprised of over 60 never-before-exhibited photographs.

Steinmetz’s approach is improvisational, and he is particularly masterful at capturing the ordinary-yet-fascinating human dramas that play out in the public spaces throughout the airport. His black-and-white photographs lend a poignant perspective on how this gateway to the wider world is a place of delightful paradoxes: a massive modern complex that sits in the midst of a sublime natural environment, a bustling global transit hub that is the site of solitary individual experiences, and a stifling bureaucratic tangle that is a portal to possibility and opportunity.

Based in Athens, GA, Mark Steinmetz is a leading Southern artist whose lyrical photographs capture the distinctive character of the region’s people and the peculiar beauty of its built environment. Since the 1980s, he has created an exceedingly compelling and quietly poetic image of contemporary American life. Mark Steinmetz: Terminus is the latest chapter in the ongoing Picturing the South project, for which the High Museum commissions artists to create original bodies of work that offer new perspectives on the South’s social and geographical landscapes.

Organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta
This commission was made possible through support from the H. B. and Doris Massey Charitable Trust.
This exhibition is made possible by

Premier Exhibition Series Partner

Exhibition Series Sponsors

Premier Exhibition Series Supporters

Anne Cox Chambers Foundation, The Antinori Foundation, Ann and Tom Cousins, Sarah and Jim Kennedy, Jane and Hicks Lanier, Louise Sams and Jerome Grilhot

Contributing Exhibition Series Supporters

Barbara and Ron Balser, Corporate Environments, Peggy Foreman, James F. Kelly Charitable Trust, Jane Smith Turner Foundation, The Lubo Fund, Margot and Danny McCaul, Joyce and Henry Schwob

Generous support is also provided by

Alfred and Adele Davis Exhibition Endowment Fund, Anne Cox Chambers Exhibition Fund, Barbara Stewart Exhibition Fund, Dorothy Smith Hopkins Exhibition Endowment Fund, Eleanor McDonald Storza Exhibition Endowment Fund, Forward Arts Foundation Exhibition Endowment Fund, Helen S. Lanier Endowment Fund, Howell Exhibition Fund, John H. and Wilhelmina D. Harland Exhibition Endowment Fund