leadership team

susan patrice is a documentary photographer, community artist, and photographic educator. Her photography and public installations focus primarily on the Southern landscape and its people and feature intimate images that touch deeply into the questions of place and belonging. She lives in Marshall, NC where she is the director of Makers Circle, a non-profit residency, retreat and workshop center for photographers and makers where she shares her passion for teaching documentary and contemplative photography. 

mike belleme is a freelance photographer based in Asheville, North Carolina. His work ranges from long-form documentary, to assignment based editorial, photo journalism and portraiture. His practice involves photographing from a space of emotional availability and vulnerability and exploring themes involving connection and disconnection from that space. Belleme is a regular contributor to The New York Times and other clients include National Geographic, Time Magazine, Rolling Stone, New York Times Magazine, Google, Esquire, Outside Magazine, Fortune, Propublica and NPR.

lydia see is a multidisciplinary practitioner, educator, and curator of art and archives who is passionate about the uses of art for social justice and civic engagement. Northern by birth and Appalachian by choice, Lydia is pursuing her MFA at Western Carolina University and is an awardee of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation All for NC Fellowship. She recently launched Engaging Collections, an online journal + creative residency at the intersection of equity + art with libraries, archives, and special collections.

frances bukovsky is a multimedia artist who earned a BFA with Honors in Photography and Imaging from Ringling College of Art and Design in 2018. Bukovsky explores themes of health, gender, family, and memory through her photographic work. In her upcoming book Vessel, published by Fifth Wheel Press, she explores life after a hysterectomy and rejects the imposed narratives of femaleness that have outlined her struggle for comprehensive, informed treatment.

advisory team

Ayşe Erginer is the Executive Editor of Southern Cultures a peer-reviewed quarterly of the history and cultures of the U.S. South published by UNC press for the Center for the Study of the American South.

tom rankin is Professor of the Practice of Art and Documentary Studies at Duke University where he directs the MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts. For 15 years he was director of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke. Rankin is formerly Associate Professor of Art and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi and Chair of the Art Department at Delta State University. His books include Sacred Space:  Photographs from the Mississippi Delta (1993), which received the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Photography; Deaf Maggie Lee Sayre:  Photographs of a River Life  (1995); Faulkner's World:  The Photographs of Martin J. Dain (1997); and Local Heroes Changing America: Indivisible (2000).  He recently edited and wrote the introductory essay for the book One Place: Paul Kwilecki and Four Decades of Photographs from Decatur County, Georgia (2013). His photographs have been collected and published widely, and included in numerous exhibitions. A frequent writer and lecturer on photography, culture, and the documentary tradition, he is the general editor of the Series on Documentary Arts and Culture with the University of North Carolina Press.

rob amberg moved to Madison County, North Carolina, in 1973 and began what has become his lifetime project – writing and photographing about the evolving culture and environment of his adopted county. His first book, Sodom Laurel Album, was published in 2002 by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke and the University of North Carolina Press. His second book from Madison County, The New Road: I-26 and the Footprints of Progress in Appalachia, was published in 2009 by the Center for American Places at Columbia College Chicago. To complete the trilogy, a third book, tentatively titled Shatterzone, is in progress. Throughout his career Amberg has been on staff or done assignment work for non-profit organizations and philanthropic foundations. His work has largely focused on rural communities, family farms, and the environment. His work is regularly published and exhibited nationally. He is the recipient of awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the North Carolina Humanities Council, the Center for Documentary Studies, and others. In 2004, he had the honor of presenting Sodom Laurel Album at the Library of Congress.