Lost & Found is a collective of two conceptual artists and photographers, Greg Slater and Jim Newbury, that create contemporary art photography as a collaborative duo.
As a creative team that has worked together for 30+ years, Greg and Jim have honed their expertise at conceptualizing and photographing beautiful, emotional, graphic and unexpected imagery. They are intentional about every series created. The Lost & Found “Object Typologies” celebrate impermanence and the time-imparted patina of everyday-objects. While their “Landscape Typologies” reflect the contemporary landscape, memory and the passage of time.
BACK STORY
SERENDIPITY
Greg and Jim’s story can only be described as a fortunate stroke of serendipity. It has been a journey of chance that brought them to where they are now. A Don Quixote wandering, an aesthetic quest, a search for beauty in the everyday. It is a journey of discovery that perhaps most closely aligns with a buddy film or a road trip novella: full of drinking, close calls, some deep conversations, and lots of laughs. Best of all it has been an eye-opening adventure with just enough danger to keep them on their toes but always with a bounty of joy. They are continually excited about what is just around the next bend.
BACKGROUND
Greg was born in Cincinnati, but had his formative years in Jacksonville. He is a nationally recognized commercial photographer with a keen eye for crafting an indelible image. Greg chose to hang his shingle in Atlanta. Jim was born in a small town just south of Mayberry (Winston-Salem, NC). Raised on a steady diet of TV, Hammer horror films at the Carolina Theater, and small-town adventures, Jim developed into an ad guy and landed in the biggest magnet for advertising in the Southeast, Atlanta. Jim’s pop culture upbringing transformed him into an award-winning art director/designer and now creative director/photographer.
HOW THEY CAME TOGETHER
In the three-martini lunch, post Mad Men eighties Greg and Jim met in Atlanta via the ad industry. Jim was a budding art director at a small boutique agency, and Greg as one of the best photographers anywhere to transform Jim’s ideas into magic. They quickly discovered that they shared a similar aesthetic passion and in particular a love for quirky folk art. Greg had visited and photographed Howard Finster and Paradise Garden, and he first took Jim there in the eighties. Following the lead of Jim Herbert and R.E.M. in Athens they got to know R.A. Miller, the itinerant preacher and folk artist in Rabbittown, GA. Soon they were planning road trips to artist environments across the South: St. EOMs Pasaquan, James Harold Jennings and his buses in NC, Clyde Jones, The Meaders, Leroy Almon, etc.
BEGINNINGS
Since Greg and Jim both loved photography and it gave them an additional layer of “purpose” they decided to start documenting what they saw while out on these road trips. Initially they decided to retrace the steps of some of their photographic heroes as they photographed the South.
William Eggleston in Memphis and Mississippi
Walker Evans and William Christenberry in Alabama
Robert Frank on his trip through South Carolina, etc.
To stimulate their time in the car they made mix tapes of the seminal music of the states they were in (GA, AL, TN, SC, NC, CA, etc.). The long trips between locations are punctuated by lively conversations about art, artists, and artistic vision.
Road trip logistics was part of the fun too, finding good places to shoot, interesting places to stay, good places to eat. They often used history to guide them: CCC guides, old maps, old railroad towns. Then they added any place that was funky, cool or unusual. As a matter of course, they always research the good places for coffee, tea and a cold beer. After golden hour and the last bit of light has disappeared, they head to the perfect local watering hole to unwind and discuss the days adventures.
TRANSITION
Greg and Jim’s intense focus on creating art along with a decline in the craft of advertising (that started shortly after 2008) pushed them to think about how they might turn their passion into their life’s work. How could they make beautiful things out of what they had been witnessing, experiencing, and discussing together for 25 + years?
WHAT THEY HAVE FOUND
America is full of wonderful, diverse people with amazing stories to tell. And the American landscape is stunningly beautiful and ever-changing. If one is willing to slow down, stop the car, get out, and do some mindful wandering they will see things from a new perspective. The decline of the Agrarian Age and Manufacturing in rural America has left many small towns hurting. But entrepreneurial spirit is still alive and a few towns are beginning to find ways to revitalize themselves. Can their success be emulated and spread to other towns? Greg and Jim certainly think so. There is beauty to be found and celebrated in every corner of America.
THEIR HIGHER PURPOSE
To coax beauty from the imperfect. To be open to what is put before them. To truly see the world by slowing down, walking among the people and in the landscape. To observe closely the accidental and the unexpected. To hear the stories. To feel a reverence for the passage of time and the imprints it leaves behind. And to elevate these simple, everyday experiences into fine art.
AN EXPERIENCE IN BEATTY, NEVADA
Greg and Jim had flown into Las Vegas in the afternoon on the first leg of a trip to Death Valley. Being “out west” they wanted to get out of Vegas as soon as possible, so they loaded up the truck and hit the road heading north into rural Nevada. As night fell, they pulled into the tiny town of Beatty, NV, population 881, that sits astride the Amargosa River. They checked in to the Stagecoach Hotel & Casino, and then went close by to a Mexican restaurant for some Chili Rellenos. They ended the night in a local bar where they met a Native American patron. After some friendly conversation about their travels and a couple of beers he leaned in and quietly told them of a route less traveled from Beatty into Death Valley. It was very remote and went through the desert mountains. There was one warning, it was Native American land, sacred land, and if they chose to go that way, they must be respectful. It was clear he meant what he said. They wrote down the directions as best they could remember them and said good night. The next morning early, not without some trepidations, they decided to take the route through scared Indian land. They saw no one and often wondered if they were going the right way. They ran across remnants of old ghost towns and the desert landscape was stunning. The solitude and the silence made them feel the natural world as their companion. They took the road less traveled and they were glad they did.
