NorthCarolina native McNair Evans photographs the American cultural landscape,exploring themes of shared experience and identity as well as the forces ofmodernization and those individuals most impacted by these changes. His workpresents personal, sometimes autobiographical, subject matter in unconventionalnarrative form and has been recognized for its literary character andmetaphoric use of light.

McNair’s first monograph, Confessions for a Son, 2014, exploresthe lasting psychological landscape of his father’s death through his family’sonce successful North Carolina farming enterprise. His subsequent project In Search of Great Men follows a similartrajectory depicting the lives and stories of those traveling on passengerrail. Evans combines original photographs with first person passenger-writtenaccounts, illuminating tensions between the individual and society’sexpectations.

Evansphotographs are held in major public and private collections, including the SanFrancisco Museum of Modern Art, and his work has been featured in numerousexhibition settings and editorial publications including Harper’s Magazine, TheNew Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and The San Francisco Chronicle, as wellas on the cover of William Faulkner’s novel, Flags in the Dust. Evans is 2016 Guggenheim Fellow.

This lecture is supported by thegenerosity of the Triplette Foundation and the School of Art through whichrenowned photographers are brought to campus annually to lecture and meet withstudents to discuss current issues in photography. 

• weatherspoon.uncg.edu
• 336-334-5770
• Free to the public