Bio of Lou Outlaw
AKA Lucius T. Outlaw (Jr.)
Lou was born and raised in Starkville, Mississippi where he started snapping pictures as a kid. He ventured to Nashville the first time in 1963 to study at Fisk University and two years later was introduced to 35-millimeter photography and darkroom processes while away from Fisk on exchange at Dartmouth College. While in graduate school at Boston College Lou met and married Freida Hopkins and began what is now a forty-year project of making intimate photographs of his first and most favored model.
Returning to Nashville from Boston in 1970 to join the Fisk faculty, Lou continued to make photographs, particularly of family-life after the birth of his and Freida’s first son. When his camera was stolen on a move to Haverford College near Philadelphia, PA, it was fifteen years before Lou purchased a new Nikon film camera and took to photographing again - experimenting his way into scanning negatives and processing images in Photoshop. In 2000, Lou joined the faculty at Vanderbilt University as Professor of Philosophy and Director of the African American Studies Program, followed by appointment as Associate Provost.
What began as a hobby is now a focal passion. Lou’s principal subjects are persons, in intimate, moving moments of the ordinary, as well as equally moving compositions of form and color and of landscapes and town/cityscapes, all rendered as works of photographic art. Therein does he find sustaining, life-enhancing joy in creative renderings.
Artist Statement
Exploring, disclosing, communicating through artful photography...
I continue to marvel at the experiences of meaningful engagements with photographs, of human beings in particular; to marvel at what striking photographs elicit—sometimes compel—from the viewer who works at making meaningful sense of photographic images. I marvel, too, at seeing respect-inspiring beauty in the face, posture, composure, gestures, dress... of a person in mundane moments. I marvel, especially, at women who are so settled in their embodiment as to be both courageous and generous in modeling for picture-making. I marvel at the soul-stirring gifts from creative artists of music-making as they move us with the sounds of music. My continuing quest is to capture such moments of experience with my cameras, to render them into photographic prints and forms of imaging, and to present some of the prints for edifying viewing—sometimes in color, sometimes in black and white, depending on which rendering feels most appropriate for the image.
I experience in picture-making great pleasure and excitement and pursue the work of enhancing my craftsmanship and artistry with passion and joy, and with the support and encouragement of a loving and beautiful wife (who has been my favorite model—sometimes reluctantly!—for nearly forty years). It is my sincere hope that viewers of my photographs gain both insight and pleasure from what is disclosed and felt during their engagement with my images.
