SouthTalks: Road through Midnight: A Civil Rights Memorial

Road through Midnight: A Civil Rights Memorial

Jessica Ingram and David Wharton

Jessica Ingram’s Road through Midnight: A Civil Rights Memorial was shortlisted for the 2020 Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation First PhotoBook Award and named one of the New York Times Best Art Books of 2020. The result of nearly a decade of research and fieldwork, Ingram’s work unlocks complex histories of the civil rights era, reframing commonplace landscapes as sites of both remembrance and resistance—as the fight for civil rights goes on and memorialization has become the literal subject of contested cultural and societal ground.

Ingram works with multimedia and archives to explore the ethos of communities and notions of progress and resistance in American culture. Raised in Tennessee, she received her BFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and her MFA from California College of the Arts. Her work has been featured in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Oxford American, Vice, Wired, NPR, and as an official selection at the Sundance Film Festival.

In this SouthTalk about her work and on Road through Midnight, Ingram will be in conversation with assistant professor of Southern Studies and director of documentary studies David Wharton. Wharton has an MFA in photography and a PhD in American studies, both from the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of three books of photographs, with a fourth due to be published in 2022. He has taught at the University of Mississippi’s Center for the Study of Southern Culture since 1999.

SouthTalks is a series of events (including lectures, performances, film screenings, and panel discussions) that explores the interdisciplinary nature of Southern Studies. This series is free and open to the public, and typically takes place in the Tupelo Room of Barnard Observatory unless otherwise noted. However, as a result of the ongoing health crisis, many events will be virtual, free, and made accessible on the Center’s YouTube channel after each live event. Visit the Center’s website for up-to-date-information about all Center events. Registration will be required for all events in order to receive the event link.