Southern Prize and State Fellowships for Visual Arts
— Work Samples —
Title: Hotel Hill, Dirt Road To Heaven, 2025 - Photography by LeXander Bryant
Description: Growing up in the south meant spending a lot of time running up and down red clay dirt roads just like this one. This particular dirt road leads to my family's cemetery on my Mama's side. During the making of my solo exhibition, Dirt Road Baby, I thought it was important to show these sacred familial spaces that hold ancestral energy.
Title: Alma Day Trampoline, 2025 - Photography by LeXander Bryant
Description: This photo was taken while I was home for Alma Day 2025, a big community cookout that happens annually. People from all over come down for the food, trail rides, and just that southern soul and blues atmosphere. The kids in this photo are actually some of my classmates' kids. I remember editing this photo and just reminiscing about when their parents and I were around the same age, not a single worry, just living life. I think it's incredible how they get to help me tell that story through this photo.
Title: A Brother's Vow, 2022 - Photography by LeXander Bryant
Description: Between 2018 and 2022, I worked for a pizza shop in North Nashville, mostly shooting photo and video content for the restaurant. One of the employees there would always ask me to take photos of her 3 sons. Since they lived only a street over from the restaurant, one day I stopped by after we finished work. I may have been there 15 minutes total, but in that time, we were able to get this powerful shot.
This image stands as a testament to the invaluable significance of brotherhood and unity amongst young black men.
Title: Pritchett's Watermelon Sale, 2025 - Photography by LeXander Bryant
Description: Included in my solo exhibition, Dirt Road Baby, my mama's neighbor and longtime family friend, Mr. Pritchett, sits by a few of the watermelons he pulled from his garden.
Title: Carry Me Through, 2025 - Photography by LeXander Bryant
Description: In this photo, I captured my mama holding a watermelon that she purchased from her neighbor, Mr. Pritchett. This was right after church, so she still had on her pearls and Sunday's best. The warm colors, my mama cradling the watermelon like it's a baby. I knew it was a special photo as soon as I got it in frame. It's that gentle love and support that's carried me throughout my life.
Title: Church Fan - Cyanotype, 2025 - Photography + Printmaking by LeXander Bryant
Description: Since 2024, cyanotype printmaking has allowed me to incorporate more process and experimentation into my practice. I use digital scans of my photography to make unique, one-of-a-kind, blue-toned art prints. For this print, I took a photo of a church fan that I picked up after my aunt's funeral. Once I took the photo, I turned it into a negative image, printed the negative out on transparency paper, then used cyanotype chemicals and the sun to burn the image of the church fan into the paper. For me, the church fan is a cultural symbol. It's a universal reference for the black church experience.
Title: Walker Springs Dirt Road Baby, 2025 - Photography by LeXander Bryant
Description: One of the main components of my exhibition, Dirt Road Baby, was this gold rim. For me, the rim speaks to Southern style and culture. As a kid, all my older cousins and uncles had rims on their cars, so once I got a car of my own, that was one of the first things I wanted. There was a time when people were putting rims on just about everything. So, for the exhibition, the rim was more of a reference for how black culture travels across different landscapes and moves through generations. The gold rim also speaks to how myself and others have been able to use art as a vehicle to move through life. -- I speak more about that here (https://www.instagram.com/reel/DRszRWEDALW/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiN WFlZA==)
Title: I Am Who I Have Always Been, 2025 - Photography by LeXander Bryant
Description: I took this photo at my Dad's place during a visit. That's my youngest son in the photo, sitting on my dad's deep freezer. My dad has since passed, but during those moments, anytime we were all together, my sons and my dad, it would feel somewhat like a 2-way mirror. A very surreal feeling. Just a lot of clarity and gratitude when it came to family structure and my role as a son and a father. I titled the photo, I am who I have always been, because of the connectedness that I felt between the 3 generations.
Title: Deacon Berry, 2025 - Photography by LeXander Bryant
Description: I took this photo while I was home visiting family in 2025. What was initially just me stopping by the church on a Sunday afternoon to say hi to my mama turned into me capturing this really strong photo of Deacon Berry.
The only time I find myself in church these days is for funerals. I haven't attended a Sunday service in quite some time. At 36, my relationship with the church isn't the same as it was when I was 14 and living in my mama's house. But that doesn't take away from the overall influence that the black church has had on my life. It's those cultural subtleties that you only pick up on if you've spent time in a black church. You can't truly tell the story of the South and not mention the role of the Black Church.
Title: Wash Away My Fears, 2020 - Photography by LeXander Bryant
Description: In this image, the natural element of water gives the photograph a baptismal energy, placing the moment somewhere between ritual and renewal. The hands resting in the water felt symbolic, like a quiet moment of renewal.
Title: Double Wide, 2025 - Photography by LeXander Bryant
Description: For me, this trailer speaks to the lifestyle and aesthetics of the southern experience. I spent a lot of time in double-wide trailers just like this one. Over time, these dwellings start to get overtaken by their surroundings and eventually becomes part of the land.