Melissa Springer
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Melissa Springer is an American photojournalist
More than 50 magazines, including Aperture, Elle, Forbes, Harpers Bazaar, The New York Times Magazine, [[Los Angeles Times Magazine], Southern Living, The Village Voice and House and Garden have featured Springer's photography. Springer's work has also been published in many books. Springer focuses on issues and was one of the first photojournalists to document the AIDS epidemic with her series of "Michael."
Springer has shown her work in many different venues including private galleries, museums and not-for-profits. She was the inaugural artist for Agnes, a photography gallery specializing in social awareness in Birmingham,Alabama. This first show was "Julie Tutwiler Prison Series" and portrayed the struggles and class system of an Alabama prison for women. For these photos, Springer spent time in prison listening to the inmates' stories. This work was part of a CNN interview about the Prison and was also featured in Elle magazine.
In "The South By Its Photographers" Springer's work was included with other Southern artists including Shelby Lee Adams, Walter Beckham, Debbie Fleming Caffery, William Christenberry, Chip Cooper, William Greiner, Birney Imes and Jack Spencer. The exhibit travelled from the Birmingham Museum of Art in Birmingham, Alabama to Columbia Museum of Art in Columbia, South Carolina; and the Louisiana Center for Arts and Sciences in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The exhibit also appeared as a book by Susan Sipple Elliott, with an introduction by John E. Schloder.
Springer and Jim Neel, photographed rural worshipers for "Salvation on Sand Mountain." These worshipers base their faith on a single, literal translation of Mark 16:18, "They shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them." Springer and Neel traveled the backroads of Appalachia into Alabama's Sand Mountain to Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky as well as West Virginia to document this diminishing type of religious service.
[edit] Newest work
Springer is a faculty member of the International Center of Photography and is working in a photographic medium that does not employ cameras. She places flower stems on photo paper and exposes them to light. This light penetrates the stems and blooms, transferring their delicate image onto the light-sensitive paper.
