Shane Lavalette Interview

So this series was created in the south? What was that like? Yes. It was the same year that Martin Parr and Kael Alford were commissioned, and each of us took a very different approach. Kael was photographing coastal Louisiana, which she had a close connection to. Martin did his project up and down Peachtree Street, and it was kind of classic Martin—I think he spent a week or two photographing on one street and capturing the life of it. And for my project, I spent the summer of 2010 and 2011 living out of my car and traveling for a few months each. That was the bulk of the photographing, and it took me through Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, the Carolinas, Florida; I went all over the place. I was really most interested in what you would call the “deep south” and the Delta—places where, personally, the music was most resonating, but I let myself wander.

The way that I approached it was that I did research, I had places I wanted to go to, I had things I wanted to see or do or explore, but when I would talk to people they would say “Oh, you’ve got to go talk to this person” or “Oh, you’ve got to go see this place,” and I just went into it with the idea that I would say ‘yes’ to any of those things and that would be what would lead me. So when somebody said, “You’ve got to do this” I’d just plan to do it the next day, just drive there. It’s really quite a luxury to be in the position to do that; it was hugely impactful for me as an artist, and just on a human level, to be able to explore the world in that way.

And I think that’s a remarkable thing about the High Museum’s commission series. It’s pretty unique and special in that way, especially when they’re taking a risk with an artist like myself who is not as well-known or earlier in