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Richard Sexton

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Richard Sexton
Richard Sexton in 2014
Born
Atlanta, Georgia
EducationEmory University, San Francisco Art Institute
Known forArchitectural Photography

Richard Sexton (born 1954) is an American photographer, author, teacher, and architectural critic with a studio based in New Orleans, Louisiana. He is best known for his architectural photography publications and exhibitions, which have been shown internationally. Sexton was born in 1954 in Atlanta, Georgia, and currently resides in both New Orleans, Louisiana, and Walton County, Florida.[1]

Career

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Sexton began photographing as an undergraduate at Emory University. After graduating from Emory in 1975, he moved to San Francisco and enrolled in classes at the San Francisco Art Institute.[2] Sexton's first photographic book project, American Style: Classic Product Design from Airstream to Zippo, was published by Chronicle Books in 1987. Sexton's second book, The Cottage Book, documented the tradition of cottage living in the San Francisco Bay area. He was featured in a 1989 New York Times article on the expanding cottage architecture trend.[3] Collaborating with architectural historian Randolph Delehanty, Sexton also authored In the Victorian Style, about San Francisco's domestic Victorian architecture.

Sexton moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1991, where he worked with Delehanty on New Orleans: Elegance and Decadence, a photo essay about the interiors, furnishings, and gardens of New Orleans creatives with captions connecting them to New Orleans’ history.[4] In 1997, Sexton curated the exhibit Sidney Bechet: A World of Jazz 1897-1997 for the Bechet Centennial Committee, which commemorated the centennial of jazz musician Sidney Bechet's birth.

Sexton's Terra Incognita, a monograph of Gulf Coast landscapes, received critical acclaim, including a 2008 award from Louisiana Cultural Vistas magazine[5] and a review in the Village Voice.[6] Terra Incognita was accompanied by a traveling exhibit, which was displayed at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, the Walter Anderson Museum of Art, the Polk Museum of Art, the Southeast Museum of Photography, and the Pensacola Museum of Art.[7]

Additionally, Sexton's book New Roads and Old Rivers was named "The New Must-Have Coffee Table Book" in August 2012 by Southern Living's The Daily South blog.[8][9]

In February 2014, Sexton published his twelfth book, Creole World: Photographs of New Orleans and the Latin Caribbean Sphere. The book received favorable reviews in the New York Review of Books,[10] Wall Street Journal,[11] Times-Picayune,[12] Advocate,[13] and News-Star,[14] as well as in Garden & Gun magazine's Daily Shot blog.[15] Creole World also was also shown as an exhibit at the Historic New Orleans Collection before traveling to museums in Miami, FL, and Shreveport and Lafayette, LA.[16]

In 2018, the Historic New Orleans Collection (HNOC) published Sexton’s photography project Enigmatic Stream: Industrial Landscapes of the Lower Mississippi River as a book, with accompanying essays from Paul Schneider and John H. Lawrence. In conjunction with the book’s publication, the HNOC also featured an accompanying exhibit of Sexton’s 100 black and white images from the project.[17][18][19][20]

Sexton's photographs are included in the collections at the High Museum of Art,[21] Historic New Orleans Collection,[citation needed] New Orleans Museum of Art,[citation needed] Ogden Museum of Southern Art,[citation needed] Polk Museum of Art,[citation needed] LSU Museum of Art,[22] and the Frost Art Museum.[citation needed] Sexton's work has appeared in Archetype,[23] Abitare,[citation needed] Harper's,[citation needed] Louisiana Cultural Vistas,[citation needed] Louisiana Lens,[24] Oxford American,[25] Smithsonian Magazine,[26] Photographer's Forum,[citation needed] Preservation magazine,[citation needed] Southern Accents magazine,[citation needed] and View Camera.[citation needed]

Sexton also taught photography at the New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts and at the Academy of Art College in San Francisco.[citation needed]

Awards

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  • Overall Excellence Award from the Southeast Library Association, for Creole World: Photographs of New Orleans and the Latin Caribbean Sphere, by Richard Sexton, with essays by Jay D. Edwards and John H. Lawrence, 2016[27]
  • Michael P. Smith Award for Documentary Photography, Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, Feb. 2014[28]
  • Joseph Arrigo Book of the Year Award, New Orleans-Gulf South Booksellers Association, for Gardens of New Orleans: Exquisite Excess, by Lake Douglas and Jeannette Hardy, with photographs by Richard Sexton, 2001[29]
  • "50 People to Watch," New Orleans Magazine and WWL radio, New Orleans, LA 1994[citation needed]
  • Award of Merit for New Orleans: Elegance and Decadence, Rounce & Coffin Club, Los Angeles, CA 1994[citation needed]

Books

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  • American Style: Classic Product Design from Airstream to Zippo (1987)
  • The Cottage Book (1989)
  • In the Victorian Style, with Randolph Delehanty (1991)
  • New Orleans: Elegance and Decadence, with Randolph Delehanty (1993)
  • Parallel Utopias: The Quest for Community, with contributing essays by William Turnbull Jr. and Ray Oldenburg (1995)
  • Vestiges of Grandeur: The Plantations of Louisiana's River Road (1999)
  • Gardens of New Orleans: Exquisite Excess (2000)
  • Rosemary Beach (2007)
  • Terra Incognita: Photographs of America's Third Coast (2007)
  • Destrehan: The Man, The House, The Legacy (2008)
  • New Roads and Old Rivers: Louisiana's Historic Pointe Coupee Parish (2012)
  • Creole World: Photographs of New Orleans and the Latin Caribbean Sphere (2014)
  • Enigmatic Stream: Industrial Landscapes of the Lower Mississippi River (2018)
  • 74; M4; Latin America: a year, a camera, a road trip (2023)
  • New Orleans: A Photo Guide to the Wild Melange (2024)

References

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  1. ^ Gruber, J. Richard (2012-09-12). "Richard Sexton". 64 Parishes. Retrieved 2 April 2025.
  2. ^ Serbin, Glen R. "Richard Sexton". Photographer's Forum Magazine. Photographer's Forum. Retrieved 1 June 2014.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  3. ^ Lew, Julie (4 June 1989). "San Francisco's Cottage Industry: Big Boom in Small Spaces". The New York Times. Retrieved 12 February 2014.
  4. ^ Bruno, R. Stephanie (7 Dec 2014). "Elegance and Decadence: The classic guide to New Orleans living turns 20". The Advocate. Retrieved 27 April 2014.
  5. ^ New Orleans Press Club Awards. "Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities". Archived from the original on June 1, 2014. Retrieved 16 January 2014.
  6. ^ Baker, R.C. (21 Aug 2007). "Rust Never Weeps - Recommendations by R.C. Baker". The Village Voice. Retrieved 16 January 2014.
  7. ^ Cannaday, Mary (2014-08-20). "'Terra Incognita': Richard Sexton Tries to Document Gulf Coast Life in Exhibit". The Ledger. Retrieved 2 April 2025.
  8. ^ Bierman, Lindsay. "The New Must-Have Coffee Table Book". Southern Living. Retrieved 12 February 2014.[non-primary source needed]
  9. ^ "Catalog: Richard Sexton". Historic New Orleans Collection. Retrieved 3 April 2025.
  10. ^ Rich, Nathaniel (22 August 2014). "Remnants of New Orleans". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved 17 September 2014.
  11. ^ "Photo-Op: Mix Masters. Photographer Richard Sexton's "Creole World" is a study of interplay between the Old World and the New". The Wall Street Journal. 11 July 2014. Retrieved 17 September 2014.
  12. ^ Waddington, Chris (18 April 2014). "Richard Sexton connects New Orleans and Caribbean in 'Creole World' photo book". The Times-Picayune. Retrieved 27 April 2014.
  13. ^ Miller, Robin (27 April 2014). "Photographer set out for Latin America, was dazzled by New Orleans". The Advocate. Retrieved 27 April 2014.
  14. ^ Coen, Chere (17 April 2014). "Photos connect NOLA, Latin American architecture". The News-Star. Archived from the original on 1 June 2014. Retrieved 27 April 2014.
  15. ^ Hutchinson, Elizabeth (17 September 2014). "Inside Creole World". Daily Shot: The Garden & Gun Blog. Archived from the original on 10 October 2014. Retrieved 17 September 2014.
  16. ^ Cross, Dominick (2016-06-30). "'Creole World' photog to speak". The Daily Advertiser. Retrieved 2 April 2025.
  17. ^ Alspaugh, Leann Davis (24 September 2019). "The father of waters | The New Criterion". The New Criterion. Retrieved 2 April 2025.
  18. ^ Javorsky, Nicole (4 November 2019). "Haunting photos of America's conflict between industry and nature". The Hill. Retrieved 2 April 2025.
  19. ^ BOOKHARDT, D. ERIC (7 October 2019). "Richard Sexton explores the petrochemical corridor in his 'Enigmatic Stream' photo exhibit". The Advocate. Retrieved 2 April 2025.
  20. ^ Leach, Christopher (26 May 2020). "Virtual Tours at the Historic New Orleans Collection: Enigmatic Stream". WGNO. Retrieved 2 April 2025.
  21. ^ "Two Levels of Mobility, from Enigmatic Stream: Industrial Landscapes of the Lower Mississippi River". High Museum of Art. Retrieved 3 April 2025.
  22. ^ "Exploring Photography with the LSU MOA staff". LSU Museum of Art. 6 December 2024. Retrieved 3 April 2025.
  23. ^ Batey, Andrew (ed.). "Special Issue: The Presence of the Past". Archetype: The Magazine of Architecture and Other Arts. III (Spring 1982).
  24. ^ Lawrence, John H. (2023). Louisiana Lens: Photographs from the Historic New Orleans Collection. Historic New Orleans Collection. pp. 274–275. ISBN 978-0-917860-91-1.
  25. ^ Sexton, Richard. "Artist of Industry". Oxford American. Retrieved 2 April 2025.
  26. ^ Stuart, Doug. "One man's private cache pays off for the rest of us". Smithsonian Magazine. No. Feb 1995. pp. 103–108.
  27. ^ "2016 Southern Books Competition" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-08-23.[non-primary source needed]
  28. ^ Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities (Feb 2014). "Michael P. Smith Award for Documentary Photography". Archived from the original on 15 January 2014. Retrieved 12 February 2014.
  29. ^ Walker, Judy (4 June 2011). "From pleasure gardens to neutral grounds". The Times-Picayune. Retrieved 12 February 2014.
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