Office Hours: Nashville Photo Educators, Students, and Alumni

Exhibition Text

To learn how to photograph is to learn how to see the world differently. Nashville’s esteemed photography educators know exactly what it means to teach this. These educators go beyond teaching the basics of how to operate a camera and instead offer their students insight into what it means to bring a photograph to life. 

Office Hours: Nashville Photo Educators, Students, and Alumni reveals not only the excellence of Nashville’s photography educators, but also their fostering of the next generation of artists. Bringing together photographers from Belmont University, Nashville State Community College, Vanderbilt University, Middle State Tennessee University, and Tennessee State University, this exhibition highlights the critical impact of a student-professor mentorship.

The student and alumni photographers, many of whom were raised in Nashville or traveled from across the world to study in Music City, clearly carry their educators’ teachings with them. In works ranging from portraiture to navigating queerness in the South to traveling the world photographing wildlife, these photographers demonstrate distinct perspectives that are crucial to the future of photography.

The photography educators, whose own works carry a certain gravitas within Nashville’s photographic scene, embody the dual roles of educator and photographer in the fullest. Their works, varying from the stillness of a graveyard to portraits of people across the South, uncover the many layers of the growing world around them.

Office Hours ultimately traces nuanced conversations around being a photographer in the South and the ways of seeing that continue to shape Nashville’s photographic landscape.

The educators in this exhibition include Beth Gorham (NSCC), Christine Rogers (Belmont), Armon Means (Belmont), Kristine Potter (MTSU), Ian Edward White (MTSU), Shannon Randol (MTSU), Jonathan Trundle (MTSU), Xingkui Guo (TSU), Tamara Reynolds (Vanderbilt), and Vesna Pavlović (Vanderbilt).

The students and alumni of this exhibition include Zoe Noelle Vecchio (MTSU), Sophia Emmanuel (MTSU), Daniel Hartmann (MTSU), Sarah St. John (MTSU), Anton Bukengolts (MTSU), Michelle Welch (NSCC), Jordan Bopp (NSCC), Michael Grando (NSCC), Allan Hawkins (TSU), Ainsley Maryanski (Belmont), Olivia Cisler (Belmont), Ben Burton (Belmont), Hollie Giella (Belmont), Janelle Hagan (Belmont), Adam Alwan (Vanderbilt), Issac Bevin Boakye (Vanderbilt), Siyoung Park (Vanderbilt), Jasmine Jing (Vanderbilt), and Allegra Hutton (Vanderbilt).