Southbound, touting 56 photographers, 220 photographs in the exhibition, 550 photographs in the whole project, opens on Friday, October 19 at 6:30 p.m. If you haven’t read part 1 of this series on Southbound, please click here.

There are several factors that go into selecting photographs for an exhibit of this magnitude. One key factor is that the photographs have to be available, but it is more than that.

“We wanted to make sure that we had a representation of Urban South. That is a part of the New South. There are Atlanta skylines in car mirrors and other things. But, we also wanted to make sure that we represented the world and agrarian cultures that are here because that is a very big part of the American south. So we also looked at stereotypes,” Sloan said.

But, at a point, the stereotypes become redundant.

“How many images do we have of downtrodden farmers? And how many do we want? Do we have corporate executives sitting at the golf course? We don’t have any of those because photographers tend not to be attracted to that. We do have black lives matter rallies and we have all kinds of other things, zebra racing in New Orleans. We do have a pretty broad net,” Sloan said.