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Marcus Morris

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Marcus Morris is a photographer and art instructor from southeastern Ohio. The photos he makes explore the tangled relationships between the histories of race, gender, sexuality, and ecology in the Appalachian Mountains. "In what ways," his work asks, "do the ghosts of the Black, queer people who simultaneously desired, suffered, rejoiced, and died on this land continue to haunt the physical and mental mountains around us?" His ongoing photo project, Elegance is Refusal, is a hypertextual engagement with Toni Morrison's Beloved, a seminal work of American literature whose connections to Appalachian Ohio Morris strives to highlight. Through a highly technical process that involves transhistorical modes of costuming, photography, and storytelling, Morris critically fabulates imagined pasts of Black and queer liberation across Ohio, evoking the historical work of visionaries like Saidiya Hartman. His body of work is a stark meditation on the limits of identity, history, and art and the ever intertwining relationship between the past and the future of Appalachia. 

Marcus Morris' body of work is visible on his website. 

Click the title of the project to view the full images and listen to an audio recording of Marcus Morris describing his inspiration and process behind the work of art. 

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  1. Artists Maxwell Cloe

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  1. Elegance is Refusal

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