What's Up - Your guide to what's happening in Fayetteville, AR this week!
Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/1490954
8 WHAT'S UP! JANUARY 29-FEBRUARY 4, 2023 COVER STORY 'Ineffable Connection' Kilgore photos capture his own heart BECCA MARTIN-BROWN NWA Democrat-Gazette I photograph these people because I love them," Andrew Kilgore says of the work he has done for much of his life. "When I open my eyes and my heart to someone whose vulnerability has so clearly defined their very being, I experience the deepest level of ineffable connection. And the best word that I have for that profound experience of connection is love." What sets Kilgore apart from other photographers is the commitment he has to capturing in his images "people who have been stigmatized for a wide range of reasons and pushed out to the edge of our mainstream culture." He calls this his "advocacy work," and it is the heart of an exhibition of his work, "Andrew Kilgore: 100 Photographs," on show through March 19 at the Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville. "Andrew has given Fayetteville its visual history beginning in the early '70s — capturing the true essence of the times and of its people," says exhibit curator Kathy P. Thompson. She says that after working with Kilgore since June 2022 to wade through just a portion of his 750,000 images, "there are a few that come right up when I close my eyes. These images are of the people who are the homeless and forgotten in our society and also several of the shots of Fayetteville in my early days — as I say, he shows the way Fayetteville used to be." His life's work didn't start in Fayetteville, Kilgore says. An itinerant childhood — Charlottesville, Va., Chicago, Western Springs, Ill., Aurora, Ill., then El Paso Texas — was followed by college at Earlham, a small Quaker college in Richmond, Ind., before Kilgore moved to New York City to attend Union Theological Seminary. He ended up studying acting with Stella Adler, but it was the era of the Vietnam conflict and, according to the Arkansas Encyclopedia, Kilgore joined the Peace Corps when his draft status was changed to 1-A. After two years in India, carrying a camera he had purchased in Hong Kong, he moved to These "Fayetteville townfolk" are from 1980, on display now as part of Andrew Kilgore: 100 Photograph at the Pratt Markum Gallery at the Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville. (Courtesy Image/Andrew Kilgore) Kilgore