Our work centers on everyday people whose lives are rooted in the soil and woven into the fabric of American society. We are drawn to photography for its power to convey stories—how a single image can speak volumes. Through our lens, we spotlight the builders, planters, caretakers, and laborers of the Deep South—those who nurture and endure, whose hands shape the land through relentless struggle. Our photographs honor their resilience and labor, preserving and illuminating the quiet strength and profound humanity of lives too often overlooked.
The work featured in this issue is from the “Right to Return” series. As New Orleans recovered from Hurricane Katrina, we took waterlogged negatives and made a new body of work that captures the moment when the levees broke. In spite of the horrors of this event, the colorful and wordless abstraction of this process suggests a way forward and a hope for the return of lost beauty.
Chandra McCormick (b. 1957, New Orleans) and Keith Calhoun (b. 1955, New Orleans) are contemporary American artists and documentary photographers living and working in New Orleans. Calhoun and McCormick use photography to provide a visual testimony to the lived experiences of African American communities in Louisiana and the United States. They engage photography as a site of social activism by documenting, illuminating, and conveying struggle and celebration, historicizing and archiving the rich traditions and deep-rooted attributes of Louisiana culture and the Black experience. McCormick and Calhoun have received numerous awards for their photographic work, which has been widely cited and exhibited, including in the 56th International Biennale Arte Exhibition (2015) and Prospect 3 (2014–2015); the Flaten Art Museum at St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota (2020); the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans (2018); and Prospect Memory Project, New Orleans (2023–2024). Their work has also been featured in National Geographic Story Tellers Summit, Art in America, Smithsonian magazine, Hyperallergic, Muse magazine, Art Review London, CBS News Sunday Morning, and PBS NewsHour.
