Southard James

My full name is James Robert Southard, and I was raised in Louisville Kentucky. I am the second of three sons of an Air Force Colonel. We were a traditional southern family, and during my upbringing, manners and respect were one of the most important traits. Only in recent years have I come to appreciate these qualities, and they have been in the forefront of my current work. Because of my interest in traditional family ideologies, I have spent the majority of the past few years making artwork that focuses on family and familial co-dependencies. I began by documenting my own family in their most comfortable places, and from there my work began to evolve toward a more universal commentary on how we as humans see and remember our kin. I became interested in the ways people recollect personal events in their lifetimes, and the varying colored veils of nostalgia, sadness, magnification, time, and deep appreciation through which these memories are recalled.