Carla Anderson

(b.1943; resides Detroit, MI)

Remains of Ty-Ty Plantation, Highway 82, Ty-Ty, Tift County, Georgia, July, 1997

State Highway 97, Green Park, Wyoming County, West Virginia, July, 1997

Money Road, Money, Lefflore County, Mississippi, July, 1994

Carla Anderson’s first venture into the American South was in 1989, and while she found the history she’d been looking for, she was also struck that the past was quickly fading. Anderson’s fascination with the aged and weathered encompasses both structural remains more than a century old and a number of less imposing, presumably still-functional, small time-worn buildings. The harmony of her color palette gives a gentle, sometimes dreamy but always beautiful, view of a landscape that may not exist for another generation. Her attention to regional character comes to the forefront when she shoots manifestations of local culture like a road-side memorial, a trio of white-washed crosses grouped together, or the eclectic sculptural decorations that absorb the entire front yard of a private home.

Carla Anderson was born on October 20, 1943 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was awarded a BFA in photography from the Center for Creative Studies (now the College for Creative Studies) in Detroit (1976), and an MFA in photography from Cranbrook Academy of Art (1978). She has received the Calumet Emerging Photographers Award by The Friends of Photography (2000), as well as the Artists in the Public Schools Grant (1982) and two Creative Artists Grants (1984 and 1987) from the Michigan Council for the Arts. Her work is in the collections of the Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit Historical Museum, Kalamazoo Art Institute, and the Library of Congress.

- Kendra Greene