Light Leaked: Zachary McCauley

from the series Sometimes This Can Be Difficult

Zachary McCauley's work primarily explores ideas of identity, family, ritual, and interpretation through photography, video, audio, and performance. He received his BFA in Studio Art with a concentration in photography from Jacksonville State University in 2011. His work has been exhibited across the nationally and published in national magazines such as Aint-Bad Magazine and PDNedu. Most recently Zachary was honored to receive the grand prize in the Fine Art/Personal Work category in the 12th annual PDNedu Student Photography Competition. Zachary lives in Ruston, LA with his wife Hannah Cooper McCauley, also a photographer. Both are pursuing an MFA in Photography at Louisiana Tech University.

Artist Statement for still images: Sometimes This Can Be Difficult

Growing up in the American South, I have always been surrounded by a notion that the region is one of magic, pride, family unity, and rich history. My own experiences with the region have been less than this ideal. The poverty of my youth and an immersion in drug culture during my late teens and early twenties have granted me access to a side of the South that is not often praised - one where magic is replaced by hot languor, beauty is found in squalid homes and damp alleys, and litter becomes a landmark to the unseen and the forgotten.

I find that the often overlooked or banal moments in everyday life are what connect the various segments of the South as a culture and as a region. While each partition of the landscape is home to local customs, it is the ever present, everyday nothing of the background that ties people and the region together.

This collection of images represents the camaraderie and love that I share with displaced or forgotten spaces, moments, and objects found during my recent period of uprootedness within the South from one state, both geographically and emotionally, to another. I hope to find hints of who I am as an individual, as well as within Southern culture through these explorations, but sometimes this can be difficult.