Staniar Gallery Presents Jeff Rich’s “Watershed: Tennessee River” The show will be on view Nov. 5 – Dec. 7.

By Erica Turman
October 30, 2018

Washington and Lee University’s Staniar Gallery presents “Watershed: Tennessee River,” an exhibition of photographs by environmental photographer Jeff Rich. The show will be on view Nov. 5 – Dec. 7.

Rich will give an artist’s talk on Nov. 13 at 5:30 p.m. in Wilson Hall’s Concert Hall on the W&L campus. A reception for the artist will follow the lecture. The talk and reception event is free and open to the public.

In his ongoing project, “Watershed,” Jeff Rich documents the complex relationship between land, water and man within the Mississippi River Basin and the effects and consequences of this sometimes fraught relationship on the Southern landscape. The exhibition examines widespread development in the Tennessee River Watershed, with a focus on the Tennessee Valley Authority, which has completely reshaped the rivers and ecosystem of the Tennessee Valley, as well as the lives of its residents, over nearly a century of evolution.

The work was published as the monograph “Watershed: The Tennessee River” by Fall Line Press in 2017. Another chapter in this series, “Watershed: A Survey of the French Broad River” received the 2010 Critical Mass Book Award, and was published as a monograph in 2012. Rich is an assistant professor of photography at Coastal Carolina University in South Carolina.

Staniar Gallery is located on the second floor of Wilson Hall, in Washington and Lee University’s Lenfest Center for the Arts. Gallery hours are Mon. through Fri., 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, please call 540-458-8861.