Proudly Participating in the 2008 Atlanta Celebrates Photography Festival

Artist Statement

"Shotgun shack, Creole cottage Saddleback, Dogtrot, Florida Cracker Farm House: vernacular architecture holds on in the American South These humble and hand-built structures trace their roots to Europe and West Africa and meet the needs of common people.The distinctive flue-cure tobacco barn is indigenous to the rural south, as well as the tabby structures of the coast and the rough hewn cabins of the highlands. As we have come to realize with the unthinkable loss after the devastation of Katrina, the world is a fragile place. Now is the time to document and preserve this important legacy."

Bio

MERYL TRUETT is a fine art and editorial photographer whose work is exhibited and collected nationwide. She graduated with a Master of Fine Art degree in Photography from Savannah College of Art and Design in 2003. She holds a Master¹s degree in Media Arts from the University of South Carolina with additional art training in France. She has received numerous awards including an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Tennessee Arts Commission.

"Growing up in the South has given me a rare vantage point from which to observe the ever- changing landscape of a region in transition. My new body of work documents and explores the unique characteristics of the vernacular architecture of the American South. I seek to collect and preserve the places of my memory before time and development transform the landscape forever."

Among the many publications featuring her photographs are: Art Papers, Darkroom Magazine, Petersen's Photographic, Camera Austria, Nashville Scene, Nashville Life, The Vanderbilt Review, Connect Savannah, Savannah Magazine, deep, Skirt!, Atlanta Journal Constitution and Creative Loafing. Fall Harvests , a book illustrated with her photographs, was published in 1998. Spring Pleasures was released in 1999. Thump Queen and Other Southern Anomalies, a book of fine art photographs depicting the quirkier side of southern living was released in 2003.

Her clients include Polygram Records, Sony Music, and the Ingram Group. Her works are represented in the private collections of Roseanne Cash, Chet Atkins, Ashley Judd, Delbert Mann, Tom Schulman, 4th and Swift, Vanderbilt University, BellSouth Corporation, S.C.A.D. and the University of South Carolina. She is in the collections of the Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah, GA and the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta, GA. She is represented by Barbara Archer Gallery Atlanta/Savannah and ShopScad in Savannah, GA.