There, Still: Wallace Merritt
December 3-28, 2019
Opening: Saturday, Dec 7, 5:30-8:00pm

“There, Still” is a collection of Louisiana landscape and nature photographs by New Orleans artist Wallace Merritt. The black and white prints have been formatted into small-scale tondos to reference the intimacy of viewing wildlife through a telescope. Merritt’s poetic stills seem to contradict the tangled overabundance of our Louisiana swamps and forests. According to Merritt, “The challenge of photographing landscapes in South Louisiana is that there’s so much ‘there’ there. Hundreds of species of plants create dense walls, scenery, and vistas of infinite detail. Usually, so much is there that you have to stand still—very still—and choose where to intensify your gaze.”

Represented by Cole Pratt Gallery, Wallace Merritt (b. 1953) is a native of Alabama who moved to New Orleans in 1981 and studied photography at A School for Fine Photography. Merritt was a photography instructor at The New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts and has been a guest artist at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. His work has appeared in national and international exhibitions, at the New Orleans Museum of Art and has been featured in Inventing Reality: New Orleans Visionary Photography; A Unique Slant of Light: The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana; and other publications.