Around 45 pictures by nine photographers representing five years of Catfish Alley Magazine will be on display at the Columbus Arts Council in downtown Columbus this month.
A reception for the photography exhibit — called “Catfish Alley at Five” — will begin at 5:30 p.m. Thursday. There will be food. There will be music.
The exhibit commemorates the five-year anniversary of Catfish Alley, which first delivered its stories of culture and real-life Southern characters in the spring of 2011. Since then, 21 issues of the magazine have been published, featuring stories on everything from professional football players to longtime local celebrities to lesser-known, though equally important, characters. Among those stories are included recipes, book recommendations and, of course, countless photographs.
It was these photographs that publisher Birney Imes and editor-in-chief Stacy Clark focused on back in August when they decided to do something special to commemorate five years of Catfish Alley. Imes and Clark spent hours going over photographs from the magazine to determine which ones should go in the exhibit.
“We wanted to give people and readers an opportunity to see these photographs without the type over the top of them, without them having been cropped or moved over,” Clark said. “You’re seeing the whole image now without any sort of distractions.
“We’ve amassed such a collection of wonderful works of art that we wanted to give people the opportunity to see,” she added.
Clark said the opening reception has the added benefit of gathering the photographers — and their subjects — to interact with each other and see the art together.
“I look at it as a collection,” Clark said. “And just having all the people that we’ve interacted with and featured and the people whose stories we’ve told be in the same room together — the potential for that to happen is just really exciting to me…I’m looking forward to seeing all these faces again and seeing them interact with their images on the walls.”
Catfish Alley Magazine covers stories from Clay, Noxubee, Oktibbeha and Lowndes counties, as well as surrounding communities, Clark said, but the magazine sells as far away as Greenwood and Tuscaloosa. It’s a magazine representative of Southern culture. In particular, Clark likes to seek out “unknown entities” in the community and tell their stories.
“The area’s so rich with characters and stories that have not been told,” she said.
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