Navigate to the organization’s website and you’ll find the phrase “a site of possibility” hovering above a grainy rendering of a barnlike structure. Navigate to that structure, deep in the woods, and you’ll find people milling about murmuring words like “resolution” and “balance”; venture further, and you’ll find yourself in a glowing, windowless red room.
Is this a secret society? A religious cult from the 1970s?
No: This is PHOTO FARM, a capacious new photography space on the outskirts of Chapel Hill founded by photographer Phyllis B. Dooney. It opened in September and offers artists studio space, workshops, and a well-appointed darkroom. And if there’s any shared religion here, it’s the documentary arts.
On this particular day, the group of 15-to-20 milling about is Photobook Dummies, a monthly meetup organized by photographer Ryan Helsel in which photography lovers gather to showcase photobooks.
Today’s meetup is organized around “portraits,” a broad theme represented, here, in photobooks featuring the colorful geometry of William Eggleston and the black-and-white counterculture of Mary Ellen Mark; one book, by Canadian photojournalist Donald Weber, depicts police interrogations in Ukraine.
One attendee shows up wearing a leather jacket with a photo of Cindy Sherman on the back—“on theme,” someone comments.
PHOTO FARM takes shape in May, 2024. Photo by Phyllis B. Dooney. Helsel kicks things off, holding up Sarah Stolfa’s 2019 photobook The Regulars, taken by Stolfa at the Philadelphia dive where she worked as a longtime bartender.
Spread out on the table, the barside photos—glossy and dark, like a Guinness—tease at some urban and mysterious ache, something that can’t be articulated in words but can be gestured toward on film.
“I loved watching Cheers as a kid—literally as a kid,” one attendee says, reacting to the bar photos. “It made me feel nostalgic, even though I was eight.”
This is the first time Photobook Dummies has met at PHOTO FARM, but it’s exactly the kind of group that Dooney, who runs the space alongside operations and outreach coordinator Rachel Jessen, hopes to draw.
“I don’t think I’m the only one who recognizes that there are a bunch of creative folks in the Triangle, and photo people, and a lot of us have managed to not know each other,” says Jessen. “Hopefully, PHOTO FARM will be a great place to connect.”
Dooney and Jessen met while pursuing MFAs in experimental documentary studies at Duke University, where they graduated from in 2018.
Dooney had long dreamed of opening a photography space and says that a series of events, including the onset of the pandemic, prompted her to take the plunge.
“We were all kind of like, ‘Huh, what do I want to do for the rest of my life after this weird moment in time that I never expected?’” Dooney says of the pandemic. “It was a moment where I was like, ‘Shit—life, you know, doesn’t go on forever. I gotta do what I’m gonna do, I’m getting old and it’s time to start the next chapter.’”
A plot of land on a tree farm, just southwest of Southern Village, proved the perfect place to begin that next chapter. The 2400-square-foot space, designed by Jose Lopez of Habanero Architecture, is sleek and airy, fitted with white oak millwork and engineered wood. The studio faces south; today, it filters in crisp October light.
Phyllis B. Dooney and Rachel Jessen at PHOTO FARM. Photo by Angelica Edwards.
The Triangle has long had a rich documentary arts scene. There’s the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke, founded in 1989, which photography, among other kinds of overlapping documentary arts. There’s the annual CLICK! Photography Festival and there are numerous museums and creative institutions like Cassilhaus, PEEL Gallery, Shadowbox Studio, and Horse & Buggy Press that offer books, exhibits, and programming.
All this has undoubtedly made the area a Southern photography polestar, though the scene is scattered and, with inflation and real estate high, the going can be tough for artists trying to build something. (The Center for Documentary Studies, too, has had a rocky road in recent years.)
PHOTO FARM, remote though it may be, is an opportunity for the photography community to have something of a home base—and to have its reputation amplified.
“I’m excited about PHOTO FARM on so many levels,” Harrison Haynes, a Chapel Hill artist, writes over email. “It’s thrilling to see Phyllis, a fellow visual artist, make such an organized and forward-thinking investment in the local art community.”
This fall’s programming includes darkroom basics, bookbinding techniques, and a tintype pop-up, the space also sometimes holds open studio and portrait studio hours.
Dooney says she is currently fundraising for fellowships to make programming more accessible. The Southern Documentary Fund is PHOTO FARM’s fiscal sponsor, and Dooney—who also teaches photography, as does Jessen—stresses that she wants it to be a site of education where amateurs as well as professionals can be drawn into the fold.
Or, as the website tells it: “We are all teachers and students in one lifetime. PHOTO FARM provides the space to be both.”
This ethos checks out: at the photobook meetup, the barrier to entry is no higher than an interest in the visual and narrative, the analog and the lost art of appreciating what goes into a compelling image.
“I think we’re filling a need, and perhaps for some people, they don’t even know it’s a need they have,” Jessen says. “I hope people recognize it’s a place for everyone.”
Follow Culture Editor Sarah Edwards on Twitter or email sedwards@indyweek.com.
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