Artist Statement
The mass production and affordability of the automobile resulted in considerable changes to our nation’s infrastructure and the need to intersect highway systems with urban neighborhoods. In reaction to my observations and research, I began photographically documenting the area immediately surrounding the Interstate 16 flyover in Savannah Georgia. I am specifically interested in the at-risk neighborhoods along the MLK Boulevard and the ways in which the Interstate 16 flyover has impacted them.
Process Statement
As an artist working in a documentary style, my immediate environment, people and place continually drive my work. I view the camera as a tool for observation allowing myself to experience, understand and document a particular history. Photographing with a 4×5 view camera allows me to thoughtfully compose images to be permanently imprinted on the emulsion of the film.
Ashley M. Jones is a Georgia based large format photographer practicing within the broad genre of social documentary photography. Jones received her MFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design and her BA from the University of South Florida.
Her current body of work, Frogtown to Victory, is her attempt to comprehensively document the current state of Savannah’s Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard corridor through long-term documentation. Photographs from her series Frogtown to Victory have been featured in numerous publications including American Oxford, LightLeaked, One One Thousand, New Landscape Photography, Incandescent, IMPRINTS Magazine, Ticka-Arts, and ToneLit. She is actively exhibiting nationally and internationally in both group and solo exhibitions.
Additionally, Jones was recently awarded the Imaging Spectrum Award for the Annual Joyce Elaine Grant Photography Exhibition as well as Second Prize in the Daily Life and Culture category for the Professional Women’s Photographer’s 38th International.