Bruce Jackson is an American writer, folklorist, documentary filmmaker, and photographer. His most recent book Places: Things Heard, Things Seen has been described as an alt left history of American culture since the 50s. Bruce attributes his passion for creativity to his own curiosity and his commitment to follow that curiosity wherever it takes him. From the Resurrection City encampment in Washington DC in the 60’s, to photographing and recording in Texas and Arkansas prisons, and recently collaborating on a play with the Wooster Group experimental theater company in NYC (to name only a few), Bruce Jackson’s matchless variousness bears witness to life with unflinching honesty and exceptional empathy. Please join us for this special conversation and a retrospective tour of his remarkable creative work.

Artist Bio: Bruce Jackson is currently SUNY Distinguished Professor and James Agee Professor of American Culture at University at Buffalo. He is author or editor of 40 books, among which are Wake Up Dead Man: Afro-American Worksongs from Texas Prisons (Harvard, 1972), “Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me”: Narrative Poetry from Black Oral Tradition (Harvard, 1974), The Story is True: The Art and Meaning of Telling Stories (Temple, 2007) and Inside the Wire: Photographs from Texas and Arkansas Prisons (Texas, 2013). His photographs have been widely exhibited. In 2017, New York’s celebrated experimental theater company, The Wooster Group, premiered a play based on his recordings of Afro-American folklore in Texas prisons, The B-Side. New York Times theater critic Ben Brantley named it one of the year’s ten best New York theatrical presentations. In 2018, Aperture Magazine published a profile on his prison photography, by Brian Wallis, “Bruce Jackson: On The Inside.”

In collaboration with SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor Diane Christian, he has directed and produced five documentary films and written three books. He has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, was nominated for a Grammy Award, and was named an Associate Member of the Folklore Fellows by the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. The French government appointed him Chevalier in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2002 and Chevalier in the Ordre national du Mérite in 2012. He has been president of the American Folklore Society, editor of Journal of American Folklore, and member and chair of the board of trustees of the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress.

Bruce Jackson with men in Cummins Barracks

Being There with Bruce Jackson