AC repair in Valona, GA

Parker Stewart’s artist statement reads like an excerpt from a Pat Conroy novel?an exquisitely worded love letter to the beauty of our coast:

“...one of the most magical and overlooked landscapes in the world. Step foot on any of the protected barrier islands? Little Tybee, Ossabaw, Cumberland?and you step into another time. Savannah itself feels like an island, surrounded by a labyrinth of tidal rivers and creeks, an entire world accessible only by water. When the tree line opens up to reveal an endless marsh, when the sky is painted in the last light of day, I feel the weight of this place. It is my church.”

From April through December, Stewart (b.1992) has the honor of sharing his beloved Georgia coast’s “quiet grandeur” in Telfair Museums’ Jepson Center, 207 W. York St. A collection of almost 30 black-and-white photographs, entitled Tideland, beautifully captures wooden shrimp boats, dock houses on toothpick pilings, summer thunderstorms, moss-draped Ossabaw oaks, and fog-shrouded marshscapes.

Life's good on a boat

As the son of a mother who worked as a public art consultant and a father who owned an ad agency, Stewart’s North Carolina upbringing was steeped in art appreciation. He started making pictures with his brother’s camera in middle school, and by seventh grade he was certain he wanted to be a photographer.

“I made t-shirts that read Parker Stewart Photography and had a website address that was the name of my AOL Instant Messenger screenname,” he told me with a laugh. “But what changed the trajectory of my life was when, as a high school sophomore, my parents took us out of school to live on a boat for a year traveling in the Caribbean.”

That immersive year of photography led him to enroll in the Savannah College of Arts and Design, where he earned a BFA in 2015.

Following graduation, Stewart ran the small print shop for attendees of the Maine Media Workshops in Rockport, Maine, a position made possible through photography professor Craig Stevens’ connections. Building upon this experience, he eventually founded a Starland-based fine art printing studio, and today his impressive list of clients include Chia Chong, SCAD Museum of Art, Laney Contemporary, Ansley West Rivers, Emma Hopson, and the prestigious Jack Leigh Estate. Along the way, Stewart has worked on personal bodies of work capturing the Georgia, Maine, and Oregon coastlines, the rural Savannah River Basin, Western North Carolina, and the Mohave Desert. While he has shown in group shows in Savannah before, most notably in Arts Southeast’s 2023 LOOK! and in the Gutstein Gallery’s 2024 Here and There, Tideland marks his first solo museum exhibition.

'It benefits from close examination'

Erin Dunn, curator of modern and contemporary art at Telfair Museums, first met Stewart while working on an exhibition of Ansley West Rivers’ photographs that he was printing. “Being in his studio was just an organic way to segue into talking about his own work,” she said.

Dunn has culled photographs for Tideland from images Stewart has been working on since 2020, and both she and the artist are excited to display them in the spacious #art912 gallery which lends itself to larger scale pieces: several, including the towering oaks of Nineteen Bluff Drive, Isle of Hope and Untitled (Marsh in Fog), Tybee Island, are printed to an impressively, and almost necessarily, large 40 inches by 50 inches.

Dunn said the show “is a continuation of the Museums’ #art912 initiative that raises visibility and promotes the vitality of artists living and working in Savannah. Parker is the perfect example of that. An artist who has made this community home and continues to find inspiration in this landscape.”

She has chosen both “expansive landscapes and details like the detritus of human intervention?dock pilings and tires, and intimate discoveries of nature such as the beautiful one [Alligator, Harris Neck] that includes a gator tail that you think at first may be the landscape.”

She added, “Like all shows, it benefits from close examination.”

Stewart picked up the conversation, “The work is very special to me. For me, they are meditations. It’s less about the time of day and more about the atmosphere. At first, I was looking for the ‘golden hour light’ and the pre-dawn glow, but that completely shifted when I immersed myself in photographing foggy days, or big, billowing storm clouds of summer mornings, or the hazy days of wildfire smoke. Each atmosphere shapes its own narrative.”

Stewart said that while he always knew he would turn his lens on the Georgia coast, he thought upon graduation that he needed to go to Big Sky country or the dessert to find success. "it wasn’t really until the pandemic that I recognized it’s all right here.”

He admits to being influenced by Sally Mann (b.1951) and her Deep South images, and by the work of famed Savannah photographer Jack Leigh (1948-2004) despite the latter’s images being more documentarian in nature. “I’m trying to create a different mood, and see things in a more painterly, evocative way.”

Another inspiration is California photographer Richard Misrach (b.1949) who focuses on man’s impact on the environment; however, Stewart is quick to point out that “my work is not about that; it’s about the impermanence of landscape and how things change over time. My biggest influence is probably Robert Adams because of how he portrays the sheer beauty of landscape. It’s incredibly raw and contemporary, but it speaks to the layers of time.”

Hushed, reverential, prayerful

Stewart's said that he feels more attuned to this concept of time since becoming a father for the first time last year. “It’s insane how my relationship to the world changed after that. Thinking about the future. That’s what I love about the tideland?the barrier islands, the creeks, the marsh, the river mouth. It’s all constantly affected by the rhythm of the tides. And that constant change means I can never take the same photograph twice. I will keep photographing this landscape forever.”

With immense gratitude for having a museum show so early in his career, Stewart would love this exhibition to travel, to explore gallery representation, and to publish books on both this work and the Savannah River Basin On the Banks work.

Hushed, reverential, prayerful, Stewart’s images are beautiful. "If my work fosters a deeper appreciation for this place, if it inspires even a moment of awe or reflection, then I have done what I set out to do.”

It feels fitting, then, that he refers to this landscape as his church. Come worship with him.

Tideland: Photographs by Parker Stewart is on display in the #art912 Gallery on the second floor of Telfair Museums’ Jepson Center, 207 W. York St., through Dec. 7. The artist will offer a Lunch-&-Learn on May 16, when attendees can walk around with him as he discusses the work. Find details at telfair.org, and find Stewart’s complete bodies of work at ParkerStewartPhotography.com