Steve Davis: "Back to the Garden"

June 20, 2013—August 3, 2013 | Reception Thursday, June 20th, 6 – 8pm

James Harris Gallery is pleased to present our fourth exhibition of photographs by Steve Davis. Davis has returned to portraiture after five years of focusing on the landscape of the West. In previous work, Davis’ investigated and often critiqued the way contemporary culture deals with people who reside at the margins, the so-called underbelly of our social classes; his series “Captured Youth” documented the incarceration of teenage youth and “The Rainier School” poignantly gave a visual record of Washington State Institution for the mentally ill. In this new series titled “Back to the Garden,” Davis photographed and documented self- described modern “hippies,” people adhering to a transformed vision of peace and love, who stand for freedom of expression often opposing of the cultural norms.

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"Kerri, 21, Student" 2013
"Peter, 21, Mycologist/Musician" 2013
"Alex, 19, Fry Cook" 2013
"Jorie, 25, Natural Builder/Pizza Cook” 2013
“Melony, 20, Mother/ Student” 2013
“Jackie, 21, Artist/Student/Barista” 2013
“Paul, 22, Student” 2013
"Jennifer, 31, Figure Model/Musician" 2013

Steve Davis

Steve Davis is a photographer based in the Pacific Northwest who takes both landscape and portrait photographs. His images always reference a social idea or group of people, whether that is the social and physical landscape of Washington or contemporary hippie culture. Often his photographs depict those on the fringes of society, in order to raise awareness and bring images of forgotten groups of people and landscapes into art spaces.

Steve Davis is the Coordinator of Photography and Media Curator at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA. Davis was twice the recipient of the WA Arts Commission/Artist Trust Fellowship. His work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, and Russian Esquire. His photographs are in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Haggerty Museum of Art, George Eastman House, the Seattle Art Museum, the Tacoma Art Museum and the Musée de la Photographie in Belgium.