NEW ORLEANS (press release) – Next month, the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) opens the first major retrospective of photographer Debbie Fleming Caffery, with black-and-white prints ranging from the 1970’s to the present. Debbie Fleming Caffery: In Light of Everything is the first exhibition to include examples representative of her entire body of work, including photographs taken throughout Louisiana and Mississippi, Mexico, and France over six decades. The exhibition includes Caffery’s renowned documentary images of people working in Louisiana’s sugar cane fields, as well as her most recent project creating exquisitely humanized portraits of birds around the world, some of which live in rescue and rehabilitation centers. Caffery is recognized as one of the foremost contemporary photographers from the American South, with a career that both grows from and stretches beyond her work in her native Louisiana. In Light of Everything will be on view at NOMA from October 6 through March 3, 2024.

In Caffery’s own words, the exhibition is “about that moment, in taking a photograph, when everything works…eyes, guts, heart, life experiences, [and] years of paying attention.” In Light of Everything will be installed in multiple galleries throughout the museum, including in the Great Hall where visitors will encounter large, haunting photographs of birds that are best described as avian portraiture. In the A. Charlotte Mann and Joshua Mann Pailet Gallery and Templeman Galleries visitors will see important works from Caffery’s career making photographs in various locales that draw on themes of faith, the dignity of labor, and the environment, among other subjects. The works from these series are presented together in this exhibition for the first time. 

“The work of Debbie Fleming Caffery is deeply rooted in her native Louisiana, and at the same time captures human experiences and perceptions that literally and metaphorically transcend geographic boundaries,” said Susan Taylor, The Montine McDaniel Freeman Director of the New Orleans Museum of Art. “Central to NOMA’s mission is organizing and presenting exhibitions that reflect a unique sense of place while sharing ideas and insights that are universally relevant.”

“Debbie Fleming Caffery’s practice engages with a number of traditions in the history of photography—from the legacy of Dorothea Lange and her work for the WPA and FSA, to both landscape and surrealist photography,” said Brian Piper, Freeman Family Curator of Photographs, Prints, and Drawings at the New Orleans Museum of Art. “Throughout her career, Caffery has built on that documentary sensibility by building relationships with the people she photographs, resulting in cohesive series with real emotional weight.” 

Caffery’s extensive work in the South resonates far beyond its place of origin, with pictures that function as meditations on different aspects of her subject’s lives framed in a way that is at once familiar and eye-opening. Caffery’s work emphasizes the deep emotional relationship between people and place, while raising questions about social and economic structures. In Light of Everything demonstrates how Caffery’s work introduces us to light in the darkness: shared human experiences captured in emotive images that hover between tranquility and unrest.

Debbie Fleming Caffery was born in Louisiana in 1948. Her work ranges from her early photographs of the cyclic seasons of the sugarcane fields, to the devastating effects of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, to life in Mexico with juxtaposed images of religious rituals and daily life in a cantina that also served as an active brothel. Caffery’s work is included in many collections, including the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and other institutions. She has been awarded many grants and fellowships—most notably a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Fellowship from the Open Society Foundations, George Soros Foundation—and in 2015, she received a commission from the High Museum of Art in Atlanta for their Picturing the South photography initiative. Her work has been the subject of five monographs to date: Carry Me Home(Smithsonian, 1990), The Shadows (Twin Palms Press, 2002), Polly (Twin Palms Press, 2004), The Spirit & The Flesh (Radius Books, 2009), and Alphabet (Fall Line Press, 2015).

• Gabby Morgan Swaine, 27, from Illinois, is the founder of GM Photography 
• She went viral after showing how to secure jewelry with a bridal makeup staple 
• Gabby’s video has been viewed more than 1.7 million times 

By Erica Nardozzi For Dailymail.Com

Published: 17:12 EDT, 26 September 2023 | Updated: 17:17 EDT, 26 September 2023

A wedding photographer has revealed her brilliant hack for ensuring a bride’s necklace stays in place all day and looks perfect in every photo. 

Gabby Morgan Swaine, 27, from Springfield, Illinois, is the founder of GM Photography, the wedding business she runs with the help of her sister, Tori, and her husband, Matt. 

The content creator, who uses the handle @gabbymorganphotos, went viral on TikTok after demonstrating how a bridal makeup staple can also be used to keep your jewelry in the right spot.

Gabby shared a video of one of her brides using eyelash glue to secure her necklace pendant to her chest while getting ready. 

‘Wedding day hack: eyelash glue on the back of your necklace to keep it in place all day long,’ she wrote in the on-screen text. 

The trick is beneficial to both brides and photographers, according to Gabby, who worked her first wedding when she was just 15 years old.  

‘Dear brides, eyelash glue is your new best friend,’ she explained in the caption. 

‘This hack was MADE for wedding photographers [because] it ensures the bride’s jewelry stays in place all day, making it one less thing to worry about in photos.’

Gabby’s video has been viewed more than 1.7 million times since it was posted on September 7. 

‘Where was this when I needed it! That’s all I notice in our wedding pictures,’ one former bride commented. 

‘I did this & my husband was genuinely curious how my necklace never moved that day,’ someone else shared. 

‘This is freaking genius!’ someone else gushed. 

Some people recommended gluing the clasp to her neck instead, while others claimed they tried the hack for themselves and it didn’t work. 

‘If it’s outside wedding and hot… it won’t work lol,’ one user noted. ‘We tried it and it failed.’

Someone else claimed the bride was looking down when she secured the necklace, and ‘it’ll pull off’ when she looks back up. 

There were also a few viewers who found the concern to be ridiculous. 

‘Yes, [because] that’s what I’m worried about on my wedding day,’ one person sarcastically responded. 

‘Seems a bit extreme,’ another agreed.

Renowned photographer and environmentalist Ansel Adams’s secluded home in the tony Sea Cliff neighborhood of San Francisco, on the edge of the Presidio, has hit the market for $5.45 million.

Built in 1902 as an Arts and Crafts chalet on what were then remote dunes, the residence grew to its current form in 1929, when a “grand salon” annex was built under the direction of Adams and his wife. The merged home, said Sotheby’s International Realty in the listing, “became the residential seat of America’s most lauded landscape photographer.” That lasted until 1957, when he moved the family farther down the coast to Monterey.

Exterior view of Ansel Adams’s former home in San Francisco. Photo: David Duncan Livingston for Sotheby’s International Realty.

The space boasts vaulted 20-foot ceilings, architectural beams, and a wood-burning fireplace. Upstairs are three bedrooms bathed in natural light, with spectacular views of the Golden Gate Bridge and the Marin Headlands.

Artist’s loft at the top of the home. Photo: David Duncan Livingston for Sotheby’s International Realty.

Other perks include an attic-turned-artist’s loft, a front pathway made from repurposed San Francisco City sidewalk curbs, and a terraced garden design by renowned landscape architect Topher Delaney.

Front entrance with stepping stones made from city curbs. Photo: David Duncan Livingston for Sotheby’s International Realty.

Adams came to photography as a teenager in 1915, when his parents gave him a Kodak camera. His first photographs were architectural views of San Francisco and natural environments such as Yosemite Valley. He championed straight photography, allowing the vistas and objects in his images to speak for themselves.

Adams is remembered as a lifelong environmental conservationist and mountaineer whose photographs captured the grandeur of the American landscape. His black-and-white images of majestic outdoor scenes have had an enduring effect on American conservationism and the creation of national parks.

Ansel Adams stands on a bluff above the Pacific Ocean. Photo: Roger Ressmeyer CORBIS VCG via Getty Images.

In 2020, his best-known work, The Grand Tetons and the Snake River, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming (1942)—intended to hang in the U.S. Department of the Interior building until World War II canceled those plans—sold at Sotheby’s New York for $988,000 (including fees). The price soared above the high estimate of $600,000, establishing the lasting impact of a great 20th-century American photographer.

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Creating a successful image is almost always a two-step process: shooting and editing. As you grow comfortable with your camera, you should also work on developing your post-processing skills. This excellent video tutorial features an experienced photographer sharing some of the fundamentals of editing photos and offering some helpful advice sure to put you on the right track.

Coming to you from Roman Fox, this awesome video tutorial will teach you some of the fundamentals of editing photos. From a philosophical standpoint, I think one of the most important points Fox makes is understanding that good edits start with good shots. There is often the idea that you can “save it in post,” and while it is certainly true that modern post-processing software can perform small miracles, you can’t will a good photo into existence with a computer. This is often where beginners waste the most time, in trying to correct bad lighting, sharpen a blurry shot, or fix a sloppy composition. The closer you get it in camera, the easier it will be to edit. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Fox. 

If you would like to continue your photography learning journey, be sure to check out our range of tutorials in the Fstoppers store.