Melissa Springer

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Melissa Springer is an American photojournalist

More than 50 magazines, including Aperture, Elle, Forbes, Harpers Bazaar, The New York Times Magazine, Los Angeles Times Magazine, Southern Living, The Village Voice and House and Garden have featured Springer's photography.^{[citation needed]} Springer's work has also been published in many books.^{[citation needed]} Springer focuses on issues and was one of the first photojournalists to document the AIDS epidemic^{[citation needed]} with her series of "Michael."

Springer is a founding member of Stare Studio along with Karen Graffeo and Virginia Scruggs.

Springer has shown her work in many different venues including private galleries, museums and not-for-profits.^{[citation needed]} She was the inaugural artist for Agnes, a photography gallery specializing in social awareness in Birmingham,Alabama. This first show was "Julie Tutwiler Prison Series" and portrayed the struggles and class system of an Alabama prison for women. For these photos, Springer spent time in prison listening to the inmates' stories. This work was part of a CNN interview about the Prison^{[citation needed]} and was also featured in Elle magazine.^{[citation needed]}

In "The South by Its Photographers" Springer's work was included with other Southern artists including Shelby Lee Adams, Walter Beckham, Debbie Fleming Caffery, William Christenberry, Chip Cooper, William Greiner, Birney Imes and Jack Spencer. The exhibit traveled from the Birmingham Museum of Art in Birmingham, Alabama to Columbia Museum of Art in Columbia, South Carolina; and the Louisiana Center for Arts and Sciences in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The exhibit also appeared as a book by Susan Sipple Elliott, with an introduction by John E. Schloder.

In "Voices Rising: Alabama Women at the Millennium," Springer's work was selected by the Montogomery Museum of Art along with Pinky Bass, Janice Kluge, Annie Lucas, Sonja Rieger and Annie Tolliver among many others. This show was funded by National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) and Alabama was the fifteenth state to mount such an exhibition, 2001.

Springer and Jim Neel, photographed rural worshipers for "Salvation on Sand Mountain." These worshipers base their faith on a single, literal translation of Mark 16:18, "They shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them." Springer and Neel traveled the back roads of Appalachia into Alabama's Sand Mountain to Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky as well as West Virginia to document this diminishing type of religious service.

[edit] Newest work

Springer is a faculty member of the International Center of Photography and is working in a photographic medium that does not employ cameras. She places flower stems on photo paper and exposes them to light. This light penetrates the stems and blooms, transferring their delicate image onto the light-sensitive paper.