(upbeat inspiring music) - [Presenter] The art of seeing is such an extraordinary sense.

Through the lens, we re-envisage our world, painting it with light and shadow.

Each frame becomes a portal, revealing a story, waiting to be told.

Colors: The Story Behind the Picture.

(bright upbeat music) - I've been here for over, oh man, next year it's gonna be 30 years, right?

If you stay somewhere for five years, you're like, man, I've done everything in this place.

I'm out.

Right?

So after 30 years, I'm still finding new things about Atlanta.

This is really cool.

Like that to me is great.

Every place I go, there's something new to discover.

There's somewhere something new that's opening up.

And I think it's that sense of discovery that kind of keeps me here.

- A lot of Black folks.

(chuckles) I like the culture of Atlanta.

I like the creativity, I like the innovation.

It's becoming a city where the cultural creativity of the city is having a really impact in the global world.

- Well, Atlanta, you know, is so diverse.

(upbeat music) It is almost like everything's converging here.

I mean, that's how it felt to me and how it still feels to me.

- It just feels like everybody has something to say and they're all expressing it differently, whether it's through clothing, through photography, through music, through fashion, through food.

- Growing up in Macon, quite frankly, when you're a teenager, the best thing to do in Macon for fun is to come to Atlanta.

So Atlanta was already a place that I wanted to be.

It had a cool music scene.

So I was like, you know what?

I wanna live in Atlanta.

I love Atlanta.

And I still have friends here.

And that's a huge thing at that age too, is that you know people and you have a group of friends.

So that's really why I moved here and it just keeps me here.

(chuckles) - When I came to the South, I called my mother because they are from the South.

My father retired and went back to Waycross.

I said, "mom, what is going on down here?

She said, "Baby, you are in the South."

And that's where I get my inspiration from.

(upbeat music) I've been a photographer for... How many years is that?

Nineties.

20 years, 30 years.

Come on y'all.

- 35.

- 30 years.

- Oh, well, let's say 30 years.

(chuckles) - I got my first camera when I was about 14 or 15.

Been about 35 years.

I worked in the plantarium when I was growing up and in the pre-digital age when we did shows, we used a copy camera a lot.

And I was kind of fascinated by that process and I was like, "Oh, I think this is something I like."

And so I was my high school yearbook photographer.

Really, I've probably been shooting since I was 14 until now.

- I was very shy, very introverted.

My last year in college I took a photography course and I decided I could speak to the world through imagery and that's how I became a photographer.

- So in 2014, I'd been headhunted by one of my clients.

It was a sort of a good job, but it wasn't a job I ever really, really kind of saw myself doing long term.

And then I think we just sort of missed working with each other a little bit.

And I was getting to that point in my career where it was like, I've either got to sink or swim.

I either put everything into Iain Bagwell and the studio at the time, or I can sort of almost kind of reinvent what it was I was doing.

At that point, I'd sort of turned my back on editorial photography and I was only doing commercial projects.

- And I was doing editorial.

He was doing commercial.

It really felt, again, like here we have two really strong, you know, things that we can do.

Let's combine 'em.

Let's bring a little bit of the look of editorial into commercial and vice versa.

- I grew up in a military family.

Part of my master's thesis was about this.

And when you get a chance, you can come over and see these pieces that are running right here.

This idea of like being fascinated with the aesthetics of militarism, but also being repelled with the effects of militarism.

And I'm an art school kid.

We're weird folks.

We like weird.

We like weird stuff.

- Coming from undergrad, I moved to Houston, Texas in the nineties and I had curiosity about hip hop because I wasn't around that.

So I would go out and hang out in third and fifth ward.

And that's how I got shooting promotional photos for independent record label companies and Rap-A-Lot records.

And that's how I started my career as a self-taught photographer.

- I've been a Fulton County teacher for almost 10 years and I teach photography, graphic design, drawing, and painting.

I am incredibly lucky to have a fantastic facility.

The school only opened in 2012 and so the Dark Room is the nicest dark room I've ever worked in my entire life.

Having gone to two art schools and worked with three different photographers, I really love and appreciate the fact that I get to teach traditional black and white, chemically based, darkroom based photography.

I feel like it makes our students better photographers.

These things, right, are magic to us.

But watching these teenagers who take this for granted, put a piece of paper in a tray and see an image come up and they're like, "Well, what sorcery is this?"

And it just blows their mind.

That's magical to me and that's what keeps me doing it.

- We've always felt that we together work a lot stronger.

- It's more important that sort of people see what we're doing as a studio, not as individual artists.

So even though we sort of have our other, you know, independent clients and things, the studio still very much functions as the pair of us.

(bright music) - Sheila Pree Bright, one of my favorite photographers in the Atlanta area.

The way that she approaches socioeconomic issues, just the way that she portrays people in the Atlanta area, is just brilliant.

And I adore her work and have been a huge fan forever.

- [Sheila] I consider myself as a photographic artist and I use the genre of portraiture and documentary within my artistic practice.

I'm conceptual in what I do, coming up with different bodies of work, ideals and creativity.

I wouldn't say I have an iconic photograph, but my work is a wide knowledge of contemporary culture.

And the suburbia work, when I first came to Atlanta, I photographed Blacks in their home.

And I could say that's maybe one of my most iconic work because I didn't play with Barbie dolls when I was young.

I was mostly a tomboy.

And for me in grad school to look at the Barbie doll as a cultural icon and thinking about Black women and how Black women feel about their bodies, I felt that it was very important for me to talk about what is the idea standard of beauty when it comes to Western culture.

- I think with commercial work, you know, a lot of clients can be very rigid.

They want something different, but they don't know what they want.

We can sort of, not necessarily give them what they are looking for, but give them something that they hadn't thought they wanted.

- We try to, you know, really, really push what we're shooting and present it in a different way that we think it really speaks to the ingredient or to the subject, to the dish, and really trying to transcend that to something that is palpable.

- Yeah, and I think even sort of working on a commercial project, I think a lot of people approach those projects from a very generic point of view.

Whereas we're always trying to find this sort of special ingredient, whether that's light or color or texture or background or a emotion that somebody might do.

We're always trying to find something.

We're trying to give something to the client that perhaps they hadn't really thought about.

- As far as commercially, my niche that I have found has dealt mainly with fine art.

So working with artists, galleries, cultural institutions, to document work, especially in the age that we're in now, it seems like it's even more important nowadays 'cause you're trying to cut through the overall noise of everybody else documenting their work.

So documentation's really important.

So that's been my main kind of commercial avenue.

And then personally, I've always gravitated, artistically, I've always gravitated towards kind of the everyday bizarre, the strangeness and the surreal qualities of just kind of everyday life.

I remember as a kid turning through my grandfather's National Geographics or Old life magazines, and I really got into that.

And this idea that you can take old images and remix them into something new, it's almost like decoding the, the ideas of the past to say something about our current time.

Choosing a favorite photograph is... and it's gonna sound like a cliche because it's true.

It really is like asking who your favorite child is.

So I have a lot of photographs that I've taken that I really like, but I don't know that I could narrow it down to just one particular image that I think is, oh, this is the best thing I've ever done.

Although this one's gonna be real good.

(laughs) (upbeat music) When tasked with the idea of how do you encompass Atlanta in an image that's a heavy lift.

One of the things I love about Atlanta is that it is so incredibly diverse.

There's so many different cultures and everything else that you can think about how to encapsulate that.

- How would you encapsulate Atlanta in one photograph?

Well, we love food.

- Yep.

We haven't really locked in an actual final image yet.

Hugely inspired by sport, soccer, coming together, that kind of thing.

Tailgate is definitely gonna feature, fire, hopefully, smoke, hopefully.

Biting.

- Yes.

- You know, hands, action, motion.

It will be a food shot.

Tailgating, it is such a southern thing to do.

And I think even if you don't want a tailgate, you're gonna end up in a tailgate eventually.

You know, the supporters groups have their, you know, much more organized ones.

There's like little, you know, just collections of people or fans are all sort of tailgate together.

They may never see each other during week, but they all come together for tailgate.

Some people go all out and, you know, do the sort of hog roast and all that kinda stuff.

Some people go gourmet.

So, you know, I think tailgating's awesome.

I'm personally more interested in the beer, to be honest when I'm tailgating, but... - We start early too at pregame for a long time.

(both chuckling) - I'm inspired with Atlanta's innovation, energy and creativity.

And I have this idea to photograph Bem.

I was on my IG and I was saying, I need to photograph him.

There's something about him, I feel like he's kind of have an uncannyness about him and a mysteriousness about him because when you talk to him, he's talking about all these different ideas and like, what is he talking about?

But then he brings it together.

I consider him as a cultural curator who was born and raised in Atlanta.

And he has a pure passion for his city and the community.

- What I realized is, I needed to drill down to what I'm familiar with, what I'm comfortable with, what I know.

And that's the visual arts scene in Atlanta.

So I knew that I wanted to do something fine art related.

And that tied in with everything that's been going on at Underground.

Underground Atlanta is... You wanna talk about something that's central to Atlanta, it is literally the heart of Atlanta.

Underground Atlanta was originally kind of like a, an entertainment district.

You go down and the physical aspect of it hasn't really changed.

It looks like a bunch of stores and storefronts that just happen to be underground.

So it's almost like you think Main Street 19, you know, hundreds underneath the street level.

It's still rough around the edges.

There is kind of a crumbly aspect to it, but, you know, that's what makes it cool.

Shopping malls are not cool, you know, grunchy artist spaces are cool.

I apologize to the shopping mall industry.

(laughs) - As an artist, a lot of time things change, but right now I'm looking for a landscape that really has historical reference to Atlanta and Swan House may be one of the landscapes that I would like to photograph and place Bem into that landscape.

Because when you see him in his personality, it's like hip hop.

And I wanted to be kind of off like, what is he doing in this place?

I wanted to have an uncannyness to it.

I wanted to be very moody and cinematic because I want to engage the viewer to really listen and to hear this image when they see it.

- The space itself is already visually interesting.

Well, what these people are doing is they're offering, because of these storefronts are all lined up in a row, they're offering really like a banquet, you know?

So I have this idea of a banquet space, like a banquet table with Mike and Marina, who are the co-creative directors of Underground.

I like the idea because of the push and pull of the old and new architecture down there and the new art to mix this idea of a banquet that has some old Renaissance stereotype elements to it, but also have maybe some of Mike's small sculptures, he does a lot of very small assemblage sculptures, on the table as well, or maybe other artistic objects on the table to kind of reinforce that duality.

And to shoot them a very naturalistic style, almost more Renaissance style, with very highly stylized imposed against the backdrop of this very chaotic and surreal kind of new imagery and physical collage.

(upbeat music) - We're in Buckhead at the Swan House and it has a lot of history to it.

And I felt that it was good to take Bem here because he coined the term "Atlanta Influences Everything."

And he talked about culture, he talked about corporation and the civil rights movement, how that intersects.

And I think coming to the Swan House connects everything together from the past to the present.

In the beginning, I felt very shaky because I wanted to get the whole house and I was using wide angle lens and I really wanted him to be in the forefront.

But as I moved on and used a shorter lens, like a 50 millimeter, I felt good about it.

And a lot of times a person doesn't feel comfortable with everybody around, right?

So when you left, that's when he came alive.

And I think those are the better shots.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Well, this is the official supporters group tailgate for the Atlanta United matches.

Well, I think just as my sort of whole philosophy around Atlanta United, it really is all inclusive.

So it's a little bit different.

You know, your run-of-the-mill ribs and fried chicken and chicken wings and that kind of thing.

Taking a quick look through the initial files, I think there's some pretty good images that we can sort of present.

- We hear a lot in our line of business, "You'll know it when you see it."

How many times have you heard that?

- Yeah.

- And I'll say, "Oh, I'll know it when I see it."

Which surface do you want?

I don't know.

Shoot 10 of 'em.

I'll know it when I see it.

- That's right.

But none of them.

I like them all, but change them.

(upbeat lively music) ♪ Give it to me ♪ Give it to me ♪ Give it to me ♪ Give it to me ♪ Give it to me ♪ Give it to me ♪ Give it to me ♪ Give it to me ♪ Give it to me (lively music) (drum beats) (crowd cheering) (bright upbeat music) - So we are in Underground Atlanta right now, which is a historic development that is basically on the original street level of Atlanta, right in the dead center of downtown.

Our symbol is the phoenix, right?

We are always rising from the flames.

And so one of the things that I love about Atlanta, and particularly my kind of perspective on Atlanta, which is the visual arts scene, is that we are always continually reinventing ourselves in new spaces.

Usually spaces that are underutilized or unused.

And that artists can come in and take a raw space or a raw area that has been neglected or maybe cast off by the general business atmosphere and turn it into something special and vital and something that literally reinvigorates the city itself.

I mean, I had a blast.

I think the shoot went great.

Part of the reason why I wanted to do this project and the way that I approached it is because I wanted to work with people that I love.

I wanted to work with artists that I knew and with people who were doing something real and vital.

And Mike and I go back a long time.

I love getting to know Marina, and they're fun people.

And the whole idea was to get in, set up some surreal, strange things that had an underlying meaning to it and play around and create things.

I try to do 99% of the work in the camera, right?

And that's just my particular style is that I want to try and get the exposure right and the composition right.

Like I said, whatever's in that rectangle is what I choose to put in it.

But overall, really it's about what feeling am I gonna get?

Like what feeling does this particular frame have versus this particular frame?

My best critic of my work has always been my wife, so I'm sure she'll get to look at 'em too 'cause I really value her visual opinion.

She's an artist as well.

Just being able to come down, collaborate, have fun, try new things.

That's what the process is all about.

(upbeat lively music) (bright upbeat music) There's a very famous quote that "All the best laid battle plans go out the window as soon as the first shot is fired."

And that's the same thing in any artistic project.

You can plan as much as you want and you may execute 99% of it, you're gonna have to improvise 1%.

- Atlanta inspires me to create, because I feel like I'm a little kid in a candy store because I'm learning the South.

I'm learning about southern hospitality and the southern landscape.

And there's so much history to be told in Atlanta.

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