O. RUFUS LOVETT

Clothespins

Easter Egg

O. Rufus Lovett  was born in 1952, in Jacksonville, Alabama. He has lived in Longview, Texas for the past 30 years teaching photography at Kilgore College and working as a fine art and editorial photographer.  He directed The Image Gallery in Longview, Texas for 10 years and is on the Board of Directors of the Texas Photographic Society in Austin. In 2005, his work as a photography educator was honored by the Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation of San Antonio, which named him a Piper Professor.  Influenced by his childhood in the foothills of North Alabama, he makes photographs reflecting qualities discovered in the rural and small-town Southern United States. Much of Lovett’s editorial work appears in TEXAS MONTHLY magazine, however, he has recently completed work for Gourmet and People. Perhaps the most definitive work of Lovett’s career is his ongoing series, Weeping Mary, which was featured in the December, 1998 issue of TEXAS MONTHLY.  The photo essay interprets a small rural African-American community steeped in history and folklore, hidden in a river bottom flat behind the East Texas Pine Curtain. Weeping Mary is also the title of the first publication by Lovett (UT Press, 2006). The Wittliff Gallery is proud to own fifty-seven of his prints to date.

SOURCE & PHOTO from O. Rufus Lovett