Birney Imes
Birney Imes (b. 1951) is a self-taught living in Columbus, Mississippi, where he's spent most of his life. He documents his native Mississippi Delta and the "characters and locales that linger in the margins of Southern memory and culture." Imes also dedicated himself to preserving his family's business running The Commercial Dispatch, the state's last family-owned daily newspaper—he served as publisher until 2018.
Imes has had photographs exhibited in solo shows across the United States and in Europe, and his work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (New York); the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York); the Art Institute of Chicago; and the Bibliotheque Nationale (Paris), to name a few. He has authored three photobooks—Juke Joint (1991), Whispering Pines (1994), and Partial to Home: Photographs by Birney Imes (1994).