Chicago Artists Coalition is pleased to present, A Few Good Words For Anybody, a solo exhibition with new works by BOLT Resident, Houston Cofield.

A Few Good Words for Anybody explores the complicated histories of Lafayette County in North Mississippi and photography's relationship to place. Over the span of two years, Houston Cofield has photographed a landscape once fictionalized by William Faulkner as Yoknapatawpha County. As part of the Flood Control Act of 1936, the Little Tallahatchie River Bottoms was flooded to create Sardis Lake resulting in miles of Yoknapatawpha County being covered with over 60 feet of water. During the winter months the lake is drained for flood control, and the bottom of the lake, as well as the surrounding woods, become visible. Cofield documents the landscape as he sees it, using Faulkner's fictional maps along with contemporary maps of Sardis Lake as guides. Through the use of photographic archives, oral history, and contemporary photographs, Cofield retraces both the imagined and real landscapes in the county.

ARTIST BIO

Houston Cofield is a photographer and artist living and working in Chicago, Illinois. He received his MFA in Photography from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and his BA in Journalism from the University of Mississippi. He is a fourth-generation photographer, all of whom have photographed in the American South.