Collinsworth Emerging Photographer Acquisitions

We’re pleased to share the work of our 2022 Collinsworth Emerging Photographer Acquisition Fund recipient, Emma Creighton Hopson. These acquisitions were made possible through grant support generously provided by the Even T. Collinsworth, Jr. Memorial Fund.

2022 Recipient

Emma Creighton Hopson

Emma Creighton Hopson (b. 1979) earned a Master of Fine Arts in photography from the Savannah College of Art and Design and lives with her family in Savannah, Georgia. Her images explore themes of identity and time as they relate to relationships and the social landscape. She works primarily with a view camera as a way to connect with the history and craft of photography and she embraces the medium’s ability to affect perception.

The artist’s most recent body of work, Wish You Were Here You Are, rejects patriarchal idealizations of the maternal by visualizing the nuances of being a mother. Wish You Were Here You Are also reflects on the illusory condition of photography and the disappearance of physical photographs.

Summer Afternoon

A Rat Surrendered Here

Postpartum with Children

Keepsakes

Borderless

Original Sin

Reconstructing Mom

Skulls Superheroes and Camouflage

Past recipients

Trent Bozeman (b. 1992) is a lens-based artist based in Northwest Arkansas. Coming from a journalism background, he is interested in how black history is reshaped, documented, and preserved. Combatting the erasure of black legacies and histories has long been a recurring theme in his projects. His current photographic work is based in the Arkansas Delta in the small town of Elaine, Arkansas. His past ongoing work explores Gullah sea islands communities, specifically Wadmalaw Island, where his family is from, and the memories that continue to prolong their cultural significance.
Rosie Brock (b. 1995) is an artist currently based in Brooklyn, New York. She recently received her MFA in Studio Art at the University of Georgia and holds a BFA in Photography and Video from the School of Visual Arts. Brock has completed editorial assignments for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The New York Times. Much of Brock’s work is influenced by her childhood memories and familial stories in the context of the American South.
Ashleigh Coleman (b. 1983) lives in rural Mississippi. Through her work, she is exploring dichotomies within domesticity, as well as the tension within liminal space—the already but not yet. Her photographs have been shown in solo and group exhibitions at the Fischer Galleries, the University of Mississippi’s Center of Southern Culture, the Claire Elizabeth Gallery, the Ogden Museum of Art, the Mississippi Museum of Art, the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Meadows Museum of Art, Looking for Appalachia, the Yellow Rose Project, and the Bo Bartlett Center. She is the 2020 SouthArts State Fellow for Mississippi.
Andrea Morales (b.1984) is a Memphis-based documentary photographer and journalist who was born in Lima, Peru and raised in Miami, Florida. Her personal work attempts to lens the issues of displacement, disruption, and everyday magic. Adding glimpses of daily life to the record is central to how she makes work. While earning a B.S. in Journalism at the University of Florida and an M.A. in Visual Communication at Ohio University, she worked as a photojournalist at newsrooms like The New York Times and The Concord Monitor. She recently received her MFA in Documentary Expression at the University of Mississippi’s Center for Study of Southern Culture and is a producer at the Southern Documentary Project at the University of Mississippi.
Jimmy Nicholson is a Quincy, Florida-based photographer whose formal photographic training consisted of a single photography class at Florida State. Originally from Bainbridge, Georgia, Nicholson was mentored by fellow collection member Paul Kwilecki. His body of work consists of two distinct periods. From 1974–1982, he traveled the roads of North Florida, Southwest Georgia, and to a lesser extent, Southeast Alabama, land bounded by the Flint, Chattahoochee, and Apalachicola Rivers, finding subjects to photograph. In 2013, he started producing work again, focusing on documenting life along the Forgotten Coast of North Florida, a section of coastline stretching from Mexico Beach to Carrabelle. More recently, he has been documenting migrant workers in the tomato fields and forests of Gadsden County.
“My work is my diary of the places I have gone, the people I have met, and events that I have witnessed.”
Alex Christopher Williams (b. 1989) is a photographer working on long-form projects that deal to race, masculinity, and history. He is the author of Black, Like Paul, a monograph published by Monolith Editions. He has shown his work at Silver Eye, Pittsburgh, PA, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, LA, The Safe House Black History Museum, Greensboro, AL, Wish Gallery, Atlanta, GA, and Con Artist Collective, New York, NY. He received his MFA in Photography from the University of Hartford. In 2022, Photo Plus nominated him for the for The 30 award. He has received the Collinsworth Acquisition Award from The Do Good Fund, the Judith Alexander Foundation Grant, was a finalist for the 2020 Silver Eye Fellowship and in 2019, he was nominated for Atlanta Celebrates Photography’s Ones to Watch. He is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The High Museum of Art, The Do Good Fund, Savannah College of Art and Design and in private collections. He runs a gallery and press called Minor League.