SHANE BOOTH | Grandpa Silas, 2023

“In the Tall Grass” is a series of works consisting of cyanotypes on prairie dresses and bonnets. These dresses and bonnets, with their historical and cultural significance serve as a canvas to explore themes of family history and dynamics, as well as American history. I choose the prairie dress, which is a symbol of rural life, to pay homage to the strong women in my family who settled the plains of Nebraska. By cyanotyping images onto these dresses, I am wanting to create a dialogue between the past and the present. The images I choose range from vintage photographs to the personal property of ancestors. Each one brings new meaning to the dresses and the ways we understand our histories. They explore themes of masculinity, family trauma, and cultural identities. I choose these themes to resonate with the dress and its history hoping to evoke conversations about America and its troubled past.

BIO

Shane Booth grew up in central Nebraska where he would spend hours looking at family photos with this grandmother, sparking his love for photography. He graduated with a BA in art from Nebraska Wesleyan University and an MFA in photography from the Savanna College of Art and Design. Currently he is a Full Professor of photography at Fayetteville State University. His diverse body of work has taken him all over the world where he has taught workshops and exhibited work in Sweden, Africa, Taiwan, and most recently Russia. He received a grant to work with HIV positive orphans in Ethiopia with Artists for Charity, and was awarded a another grant by the US Embassy in Moscow to work with the LGBTQ and HIV positive people in Russia. He has many honors including being nominated for Sweden’s favorite TV star by QX magazine for his stint on the wildly popular reality tv show Allt for Sverige, tackling the subject of being HIV positive. It was his time on this show that took him back to his roots and he began photographing Nebraska and its people. He also photographed Laura Bush for The National Willa Cather Foundation. His camera of choice is an antique studio camera from 1867 which he found in a junk shop in Alma NE that he has converted to shoot 8x10 film. He has recently began making cyanotype prairie dresses and bonnets.