SlowExposures 2026 — Photography of the Rural South

SlowExposures is a long-running annual photography festival in Pike County, Georgia dedicated to images of the contemporary American South. Founded in 2003 and now in its 20th year, the festival anchors a weekend of exhibitions, talks, and the popular PopUp Tour in and around the small town of Concord.

The 2026 Main Exhibition is regionally focused: photographs must be made in one of sixteen Southern states — Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, or West Virginia. The brief invites work that captures the diversity, contradictions, and complexity of the South rather than a fixed theme.

Selected images — typically 70 to 90 prints — are displayed at the historic R.F. Strickland Building in downtown Concord during the festival weekend, September 18–20, 2026, then move on to a month-long run at the Cochran Gallery in LaGrange, Georgia.

Jurors for the 2026 edition are Dennis Kiel and Coco Conroy. The entry fee is $50 for up to six images and underwrites venue rental, juror expenses, receptions, publicity, and awards. All entrants — selected or not — are invited as honored guests to the private Soiree on Friday night at Split Oak Farm.