A picture is worth a thousand words.

As Cliché as this might sound, David Zurick would concur, finding no better way to illustrate what constitutes “the South” than through a series of photographs. These photographs range from a giraffe standing tall amidst a bundle of trees, to an open corn field where an onlooker can almost feel the corn swaying with the slightest breeze.

Zurick, a photographer, geographer, professor at Eastern Kentucky University and recipient of the “National Outdoor Book Award” first sought to explore the south in 1996. He was curious as to why the south was seen “apart from the rest of America” and to some “as a place that is losing its identity.”

He found the regions “southernness” most intriguing and through his images Zurick stresses the idea that there isn’t just one south but in fact many. Zurick says his images sought to convey “an outsider’s geographical perspective on southerners.”

While Zurick’s images are each unique and each present different descriptive and opinionated captions, all are similar in the fact that they are captured in black and white.

When Ole Miss Center for American Places director, George Thompson first saw Zurick’s photographs he approached Southern Studies director David Warden about asking Zurick for approval to display his images here at Ole Miss. Zurick, although in Nepal for the remainder of the year, agreed. An exhibit was then established.

Zurick’s exhibit entitled, “Southern Crossings Where Geography & Photography Meet” is open to the public from now until October 14^th in the Barnard Observatory. Mary Hartwell Howorth of the Department of Southern Studies says the exhibit is special and, “people should come to the exhibit because of curiosity and an interest to learn about other views people have of the South. They are iconic photographs of places in the South and I like it.”