“In Ordinary Times” comes to Reinhardt’s Falany
March 21-April 8, 2022
a lifetime photographing people and inviting empathy for them through
his photographs.
My former student and longtime friend, Neil McGahee, became a documentary photographer after college and worked as a photojournalist in the Middle East, Africa, and Northern Ireland. Back in the US he began taking photos of ordinary people doing ordinary things in real time. While working at the Minneapolis Star–Tribune he recorded the lives of two aging farmers, “Charlie and Wilhelm.” The photos won him the Leica’s Barnack Award and a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize.
Another pictorial essay, the story of a fourteen- year-old’s fight with bone cancer garnered him another Pulitzer nomination.
Later work led to a pictorial essay published in book form, In Ordinary Times, showing people in daily circumstances, whose faces offer “dignity to a chaotic world too busy to stop and look and appreciate.”
A lifetime has found Neil in the role of newspaper editor and publicist, but his first love is photography. When we talked about his coming exhibition at Reinhardt University, I asked him if he wished he could be in Ukraine covering the people’s courage in the face of armed destruction. Of course, his reply was a resolute “Yes.”
The show begins with a reception on the evening of March 21st at 6:00 PM in the Falany Performing Arts Center. The photos will be exhibited at the Falany through April 8, 2022.
I hope you will pass this along to friends interested in art and photography.