For more than fifteen years Jerry Siegel has been photographing southern artists-writers, painters, sculptors, and musicians. Following in the footsteps of his namesake uncle, Jerry Siegel, who was one of the earliest collectors and promoters of Southern artists, the younger Siegel continually traces regional Southern artistic talent back to its creators, whom he captures in portraits as emotionally affecting as they are visually striking. Facing South: Portraits of Southern Artistsreproduces, in both black-and- white and color, one hundred of these portraits. Facing Southalso includes two essays, one on the nature of photographic portraiture by Julian Cox, Curator of Photography at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, and an essay on the arts of the south by Dennis Harper, Curator of the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University. Brief biographies of the 100 subjects are included. Jerry Siegel,a native of Selma, graduated from the Art Institute of Atlanta. After 29 years as a commercial photographer in Atlanta, Siegel returned to Birmingham where he continues to shoot for commercial clients while pursuing his fine arts work, focusing on the Black Belt region and portraits of southern artists.His work has been shown in solo exhibitions at The Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans; The Museum of Contemporary Art in Atlanta; the Wiregrass Museum of Art in Dothan; and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Art. A commissioned body of work for the Columbus Museum in Columbus, Georgia, was featured in the 2009 solo exhibition Now and Then, Snapshots of the South. Facing Southis a co-publication of the University of Alabama Press and the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University.