This vibrant catalogue showcases a decade’s work by Memphis-based Peruvian- American photographer Andrea Morales (b. 1984), whose camera sympathetically delves into community life and activism in the American South. It accompanies her first major exhibition at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, represents the first scholarly publication on her work, and the first major museum exhibition dedicated to movement journalism. The unofficial capital of the Mississippi Delta, Memphis, Tennessee, has long been a place bubbling with activism and social movements. Roll Down Like Water – a nod to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s iconic last speech in the city in support of the 1968 Sanitation Workers’ Strike – shows Andrea Morales’s incredible ability to engage with her subjects, in Memphis and the surrounding region, through the lens. From intimate portraits and records of daily life to the documentation of social and environmental movements with local and national resonance, her photography builds a passionate and tender portrait of this unique part of the American South. The energy vibrating through Morales’s stills is the energy of the people themselves: the artist centres her practice on building long-term relationships with the communities she photographs, and views this relationship as one of collaboration rather than detached observation. Her approach is informed by ‘movement journalism’, which recognizes that journalism, like the camera, is not totally objective: behind laptops and lenses are people, institutions and systems that hold and wield power, for good or ill. By establishing a human connection between chronicler and people and rooting it in an ethical and rigorous framework, Morales’s ‘community-driven visual storytelling’ reaches beyond historical injustice to capture the liveliness and joy of the communities she photographs. For Memphis, and Morales, King’s words loom large. Echoing his description of collective liberation as ‘an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny’, Morales’s captivating images of the American South in moments of turbulence, stillness, darkness and beauty chart new, sustainable paths in photojournalism, while reflecting upon identity, community and the power of storytelling.
