A new exhibit at Emory’s Michael C. Carlos Museum presents photographs of Atlanta soccer, football and basketball fans in the myriad places they converge, from stadiums to tailgate parties.
Despite this, photographer Sheila Pree Bright does not consider herself a fan.
“No, I don’t watch sports,” she says. “My family, they’re all cheering and everything, and I’m just looking at them, like …” Bright shakes her head.
The fine-art photographer was born in Waycross, Georgia, grew up in a variety of places as a member of a military family, and now makes her home in Atlanta. She has documented a Black farming community in Ellenwood, Georgia, as well as Civil Rights activists and 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.
She got her start photographing the burgeoning hip-hop scene in 1990s Houston. Her work hangs in the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the High Museum of Art.
When she turned her camera lens on sports fans, she was surprised to realize they had more in common with her previous subjects than she’d thought.
