Jack Spencer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jack Spencer (born 1951) is a self-taught American photographer.
Spencer was born in Kosciusko and his first love was music, performing in rock bands making a recording.[citation needed] He is probably best know for his series, Native Soil that featured deep sepia tones combined with deep-South imagery. Spencer heavily manipulates his photographs in the darkroom.
Spencer's Lost Boys series came about because of abuse he saw in Nashville where a young boy Pel Gai was murdered in a nightclub there. Pel Gai is from the Southern part of Sudan and about 150 refugees were sent to Nashville after reaching a refugee camp in Kenya.
Spencer's work was also included in The South By Its Photographers with many other Southern artists including Shelby Lee Adams, William Christenberry, and Melissa Springer. This exhibition was shown at the Birmingham Museum of Art, Columbia Museum of Art, and Louisiana Center for Arts and Sciences. The exhibit spurred the careers of these photographers and was also made into a book by Susan Sipple Elliott. Spencer's work was also chosen to be in Picturing the South curated by Ellen Fleurov.
