A Love Letter to Memphis

The current show at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art celebrates Andrea Morales’ decade of photojournalism.

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Andrea Morales has been making photographs since she was a child, and yes, “making photographs” is the right phrase here. Not taking photographs, capturing, or shooting. For Morales, these words are too aggressive to describe a process that is about building trust and intimacy between the photographer and the photographed individuals, or, as Morales calls them, her collaborators.

She’s been working in Memphis as a photojournalist for a decade now, making photographs of the community. Readers probably recognize her name from her work as the visuals director at MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, but she’s also been featured in The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, and TIME Magazine, among many others. She’s photographed the cover of Memphis Magazine and in March 2021 was profiled in this publication’s “Mind’s Eye” series of noteworthy local photographers. Now, to add to her impressive resume, the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art has opened an exhibit of 65 of her photographs, titled “Roll Down Like Water.”

Taking its name from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop Speech,” his final speech in Memphis, in which he said, “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream,” the exhibit, according to its curator Rosamund Garrett, is “a portrait of America through Memphis.”

“There are some tremendously famous photographers from this area,” Garrett says, “but I really feel that Andrea looks at things through a very fresh lens, and she looks at this region very directly, very earnestly, in a way that still allows the magic of this place to come through.”

The photographs in the exhibit illustrate life in Memphis and the surrounding region through intimate moments shared between Morales and her collaborators. There are moments of joy — majorettes dancing down Park Avenue during the Southern Heritage Classic Parade. Moments of surrender — a man receiving notice to vacate his property. Moments of unbridled joy — a young girl adorned in garland before a Christmas celebration at Carpenter Art Garden.

Often centered in the frame, the photographed individuals take on an air of sacredness, not unlike the Christian iconography of the photographer’s Catholic childhood, or the works by Renaissance painters, which rely on a visual language of “instantly recognizable images,” or as Morales calls them “the magnitude of small gestures.” As the wall text of the exhibit reads, “When Morales composes her photograph, she waits in close observation for a detail to reveal itself that holds the weight of human connection in that moment.”

It’s about having the viewer take a moment to pause, see when someone wants to feel seen, and realize that the moment shown is just part of the comprehensive story. In her typical process, her photographs would be for a written story, to add more human connection behind the written word. But now viewers have the opportunity to engage with her work in the context of her first museum exhibition.

In this exhibit — not in a publication with someone else’s byline, a headline she didn’t choose, or quotes she didn’t pull — the photos can stand alone. “That means that there’s a vernacular within the images versus them being in conjunction or supporting someone else’s words that I had no say in,” Morales says. “It does feel like something’s being restored, I guess. It’s like back to that feeling of the moment [of making the photo] because you have that moment and then you kind of have to tuck it away because this photo has to exist in this one context [of an article]. But this is all existing in the context of me and Memphis right now. That’s been crazy. It feels very special to be honored this way, to be able to hold this much space.”

“Andrea is one of the great artists of our time,” Garrett says (to which Morales humbly objects). “We wouldn’t have done a major museum exhibition and a catalog, which are huge undertakings, otherwise.”

For this show, gallery walls have been painted a dusky blue, a shade that the curator says picks up the colors of the Memphis sky as seen in Morales’ photos. An entire exhibit of white walls wouldn’t do. Everything is intentional, especially in the placement of the pieces, which are often arranged to complement each other.

On one wall, for instance, a photo of wisteria blooming on a neglected fence is centered between a photo of LaAnthony Douglas, a dancer with his feet in fifth position, and another of a majorette in motion. Douglas’ and the majorette’s arms both open towards the wisteria, which is framed in gold, a nod to the Catholic church’s fondness for the material. A sacred triptych is formed, these moments of dance and movements juxtaposed with the quietness of the wisteria, reflecting, Morales says, “the beating heart of Memphis … that build[s] from that quiet into the crescendo that is this place.”

Such attention to detail only points to the exhibit’s role, as Garrett says, as “a love letter to Memphis.” Accompanying each photo is a simple caption identifying the who, what, when, and where, instead of a label with the curator’s interpretation. “We want people to come in and see something that’s astonishingly beautiful,” Garrett says. This is about the community and for the community to interact with in the way they decide is appropriate.”

After all, Morales engages in what’s called movement journalism, an approach that emphasizes community over objectivity, lending itself to stories of injustice against marginalized people. “It’s not an easy place for people who are of marginalized identities,” says Morales. “In journalism, it tends to both be designed for and favor white people, white men in particular. And that means that your voice can be deemed by someone in that authoritative space as insufficient.

“I’m kind of wired for the idea of serving Memphis,” she continues,” and there’s lots of ways that you could do that throughout photography. I’m just doing it through journalism.” To Morales, that means depicting “a dignified community,” which comes through in this exhibit and in all of her photos.

Significantly, Morales’ use of movement journalism makes the Brooks the first museum to showcase movement journalism, and the first to publish a catalog on it. Because of this, Garrett says, “This is a deeply Memphis show, but it’s certainly of national and international relevance. Trust in journalism is at a difficult point in our society, but journalism is so important for democracy and society. Andrea’s process shows a new way forward, in documentary photography and photojournalism, and so in that sense we wanted to honor Andrea, but also wanted to show that she has something special to offer the world that can have an enormous impact on making this world a better place. It’s a lasting legacy for Memphis.”

Andrea Morales’ “Roll Down Like Water” will be on display at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art through January 2025. For more information, including coinciding programming, visit brooksmuseum.org/exhibitions/andrea-morales-roll-down-like-water.