The
Ohio State University
Photography & Cinema Alumni Society
ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT
Jack Leigh
Jack Leigh, a native of Savannah, Georgia, began his career as a photographer in 1972, following formal studies at the University of Georgia. His objective from the beginning of his professional career has been to seek out and record the people, environments, and rapidly passing lifestyles of his native region-the American South.
In the early seventies Mr. Leigh lived in Columbus, Ohio and served on the staff of The Ohio State University Department of Photography and Cinema.
Mr. Leigh's award-winning photographs have appeared in the museum and gallery exhibitions, magazines, and newspapers and in four highly acclaimed books-Oystering: A Way of Life, The Ogeechee: A River and Its People, Nets & Doors: Shrimping in Southern Waters, and Seaport: A Waterfront at Work. He has been the recipient of a Southern Arts Federation/National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Photography.
Jack Leigh's first extended project concentrated on the lives of oystermen along the barrier islands of the South Carolina coast. After two years' work on the oyster boats and in the shucking houses and steam factories, he assembled his first book, Oystering: A Way of Life, which was published in 1983 by the Carolina Art Association.
Next Mr. Leigh devoted another two years to a photographic journey on Georgia's Ogeechee River, tracing the river from its source in a field in Northeast Georgia to its confluence with the Atlantic Ocean. The Ogeechee: A River and Its People was published in 1986 by the University of Georgia Press as part of the Wormsloe Foundation publications series.
From 1986 to 1989, Jack Leigh followed the lives of the shrimp fishermen on Georgia's coastal waters. Nets & Doors: Shrimping in Southern Waters was published by Wyrick & Company in late 1989. Seaport: A Waterfront at Work, published in 1996 by Wyrick & Company, was the result of six years work on the docks, pilot boats, and container ships in the busy Port of Savannah. It marks the fourth volume of Jack Leigh's ongoing chronicle of American Life.
In 1994, Leigh’s best known photograph The Bird Girl was featured on the cover of John Berendt’s best-selling book, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and has since then brought about worldwide recognition to photographer Jack Leigh.
In the forward to, Seaport: A Waterfront at Work, also published by Wyrick & Company, Jack Leigh wrote of the journey that brought him back home: “I have wanted to photograph the port of Savannah for as long as I can remember. I had moved away from Savannah for many years after graduating from the University of Georgia. My feelings were to get as far away from my hometown as possible-to seek a new life and a new way of seeing that life. Photography was going to be the ship I would board to take me to these new places and experiences. Strange thing about such a journey: the farther I got away from home, the clearer and more meaningful did my images of home become.”
W. W. Norton Publishers is currently preparing a two hundred print book of Jack Leigh’s photographs which is due for release in December, 2000.
Jack Leigh Gallery
132 East Oglethorpe Avenue
Savannah, Georgia 31401
(912) 234-6449
New Fund Raising Program
You can buy some of Jack's books at Amazon.com and help support the Alumni Society.