Albany, Georgia | Mentor: Kelli Connell
Jess Rhodes (b.1987) is a photographer and editor living in the American South. Born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, she spent fourteen years in the San Francisco Bay Area before moving to southwest Georgia in 2021. Jess currently acts as the senior editor for Pamplemousse Magazine, a periodical highlighting contemporary film photography. She received her BFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design.
She is primarily focused on long-term projects that explore ideas of timelessness, reverence, sardonicism, magical realism, near-miss moments, and the American vernacular.
“I’ve felt a renewed understanding of photography’s impact. This fellowship has made me a more focused, intentional, passionate, and driven artist. It’s truly an honor to be counted among such talented peers and mentors.”
-Jess Rhodes | 2025 Junior Fellow
Project Statement
Any other day, we might have missed it – the misty meadow, a millpond big wheel impatient for smooth, black water. The box of frogs in the garage, a shoe of trees, or the three bruises on your arm. A sugar-free tiger-zoo.
I found these moments in Catchland. Originally an attempt at social commentary, Catchland is my personal epiphany in the unseriousness of the American experience. There’s more to the story than the death of small-town America and dead-end streets. There’s an urgency underlying the slow pace of the exquisite American landscape. There’s moments of sincerity wrapped in sardonicism. There’s reverence untouched by any hint of irony. It’s all here in the beautiful, fractured mirror of our contemporary reality.
Photographing digitally using only available light, I’m inspired by concepts of timelessness, the American vernacular, and the razor-thin line that lies between the strange and the mundane. Catchland began to evolve when I tried to understand the feelings I get when I explore off-beat places, but has since become more about capturing the small, strange seconds where the world feels almost out of time. I want the purest American feeling: that raw, individualized authenticity brought to the surface, set free from the constraints of an increasingly contentious world, and I want to share it with you. So come with me to Catchland, a place made of the corners that feel so far-off. A place where the heart beats on its own terms.
2025 Junior Fellows: Walker Bankson | Sam Gulliver | Rosemary Haynes | Jasmine Huang | Jess Rhodes | Lawren Simmons