Southern Gothic
About
Southern Gothic—a term taken from an established tradition in American Literature—is a category for artworks that feature themes and images drawn from the dark corners of the American South. From the grotesque masked figures present in Ralph Eugene Meatyard’s black-and-white photographs to the antebellum ruins of photographer Sally Mann's images, such works might evoke folklore, oral history, local communities, concepts of the abnormal, and plantation life. Work from contemporary and modern artists, predominantly photographers like Alec Soth and Walker Evans, might also capture the dark landscape of the American South—its overgrown yards, decaying mansions, paint-peeled front porches and quiet corner stores that bear the traces of the region’s historical scars.
