Mark Sloan was tired of the stereotypes, of how people thought of southerners as slow-talking, slow-thinking bumpkins.

So he set out to change those perceptions.

The result of his efforts is the photo exhibit “Southbound: Photographs of and about the New South,” now showing at the LSU Museum of Art.

Sloan, director of the Halsey Institute of the College of Charleston, and the institute’s curator-at-large Mark Long began working on the project six years ago.

What started with a search for images developed in one of the most comprehensive projects about the American South ever assembled.