In her latest book published by Workshop Arts, I Still Speak Southern In My Head, Nancy Richards Farese creates collages that incorporate threads, beads, buttons and cloth with family archive images and recent photographs to create a complex visual memoir in which Farese reexamines her childhood growing up in the South in the 60s. Some of the cultural tropes resonating with the Southern experience that she considers and questions include the culture of segregation, views on female-gendered roles, and the intersections between what we experience as children and what we learn about those experiences and memories of place, home, and family once we’ve grown.
I Still Speak Southern In My Head stems from a traveling mixed media exhibition entitled ADD|MIX|FOLD that includes the hand-crafted photographs shown in this book. Farese sews and cuts into her photographs to create objects that reference the influence the past holds on our lives in the present. The title comes from a family pound cake recipe, and serves as a metaphor for how we blend and slice up stories and memories to make sense of ourselves during these extraordinary, frenetic, ephemeral times.
“Even as I work to make sense of my own complex history, I find myself explaining the South to those who still view the region with suspicion, saddled with the moral burdens of racism and injustice. It’s clear now that racism is less a Southern problem than an American problem. I believe that not talking about these things has consequence, and that the only past we are truly conversant in, and can take responsibility for, is our own.” – Nancy Richards Farese
About the artist:
Nancy Farese is a photographer, author, and entrepreneur whose work promotes visual storytelling as an essential tool for social good. An award-winning documentary photographer, she has worked extensively for international development organizations including the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, CARE USA, RefugePoint, and the Carter Center. Farese holds a master’s degree in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School and was a Fellow at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy. Her writing has been published in the NiemanStoryboard, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and San Francisco Chronicle. She is the founder of the visual storytelling nonprofits PhotoPhilanthropy (2009) and CatchLight (2015), and is a board member of Southwire Company, NPR Foundation, and CatchLight. Originally from Carrollton, Georgia, Farese now lives in Marin County, California.
For more information, go to https://www.nancyfarese.com
Book Details:
Nancy Richards Farese : I Still Speak Southern In My Head
Published by Workshop Arts
Essay by Nancy Richards Farese
Design by Caleb Cain Marcus, Luminosity Lab
Binding: Hardcover Swiss
64 pages with tip ins, and smaller pages
8 inches x 10.85 inches
ISBN: 978-1-959684-08-4
https://wrkshp.art/collections/books/products/i-still-speak-southern-in-my-head
