September 2024 - January 2025
Andrea Morales: Roll Down Like Water
Memphis-based Peruvian-American photographer Andrea Morales’s portrayal of the Delta South is deeply rooted in the communities she engages with, and, because of this, a truer account of this region that is often portrayed through stereotypes, misperceptions, nostalgia, and storytelling.
Her approach is informed by “movement journalism,” which recognizes that journalism, like the camera, is not objective or “fair and balanced.” Journalists, both writers and photographers, are not passive spectators removed from the communities they represent; behind laptops and lenses there are people, institutions, and systems that hold and wield power, for good and for ill. By acknowledging the myth of objectivity, movement journalism strives to meet the needs of communities directly impacted by injustice through centering ethics, rigor, and depth of authentic relationships. Morales’s images range from intimate portraits and records of daily life to the documentation of social and environmental movements with local and national resonance.
Through her captivating images of the American South in moments of turbulence, stillness, darkness, and beauty, Morales charts new paths in sustainable journalism, while reflecting upon identity, community, and the power of storytelling. Andrea Morales: Roll Down Like Water features over sixty works by Andrea Morales and marks the artist’s first major touring exhibition and scholarly catalogue.
Exhibition Programs
Artist
Curators
Artist + Curator
Andrea Morales
Andrea Morales began working with a camera in college where she studied journalism. Drawn to photography as a tool for storytelling, she found the camera and the stories it could tell personally helpful in addressing the “perpetual anxiety” she felt speaking English as a second language. Morales was born in Peru and reared in Miami’s Little Havana. Since 2014, she’s been a documentary photographer based in Memphis, as well as a producer at the Southern Documentary Project, housed at Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. Andrea is also the Visuals Director of MLK50, an online non-profit news organization. While the photos on display here relate to projects she pursued at MLK50, Morales’s work also appears regularly in the New York Times and other news publications.
Morales practices community journalism, which does not prioritize the story’s intended audience but, rather, the people in the stories. Morales carefully avoids calling people “subjects” in a photograph, and prefers to think of them as collaborators in the story they together choose to tell. She favors this approach because it allows her to develop long-term relationships leading to trust and co-investment in the story being told. Ultimately, community journalism helps to create community through shared experiences. When her work becomes, at times, overwhelmingly difficult, she summons the words of Chicago organizer Mariame Kaba, “Hope is a discipline and . . .we have to practice it every single day.”
Photojournalist
Andrea Morales
Andrea Morales began working with a camera in college where she studied journalism. Drawn to photography as a tool for storytelling, she found the camera and the stories it could tell personally helpful in addressing the “perpetual anxiety” she felt speaking English as a second language. Morales was born in Peru and reared in Miami’s Little Havana. Since 2014, she’s been a documentary photographer based in Memphis, as well as a producer at the Southern Documentary Project, housed at Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. Andrea is also the Visuals Director of MLK50, an online non-profit news organization. While the photos on display here relate to projects she pursued at MLK50, Morales’s work also appears regularly in the New York Times and other news publications.
Morales practices community journalism, which does not prioritize the story’s intended audience but, rather, the people in the stories. Morales carefully avoids calling people “subjects” in a photograph, and prefers to think of them as collaborators in the story they together choose to tell. She favors this approach because it allows her to develop long-term relationships leading to trust and co-investment in the story being told. Ultimately, community journalism helps to create community through shared experiences. When her work becomes, at times, overwhelmingly difficult, she summons the words of Chicago organizer Mariame Kaba, “Hope is a discipline and . . .we have to practice it every single day.”
Rosamund Garrett
Dr Rosamund Garrett is the Chief Curator at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. Born in the United Kingdom, Rosamund gained her undergraduate at the University of Edinburgh and Edinburgh College of Art, before joining The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, for her MA (2011-12), and PhD (2012-2016). There she specialized in the art of Northern Europe in the Late Medieval and Renaissance period. Dr Garrett has worked in various museum positions in the UK including The National Trust and The Courtauld Gallery in London, working primarily with European Art and global contemporary art. In November 2018, Dr Garrett moved to Memphis. Here, she has worked on exhibitions including Power & Absence: Women in Europe, 1500 - 1680, Mona Hatoum: Misbah, and On Christopher Street: Transgender Portraits by Mark Seliger.

Chief Curator
Rosamund Garrett
Dr Rosamund Garrett is the Chief Curator at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. Born in the United Kingdom, Rosamund gained her undergraduate at the University of Edinburgh and Edinburgh College of Art, before joining The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, for her MA (2011-12), and PhD (2012-2016). There she specialized in the art of Northern Europe in the Late Medieval and Renaissance period. Dr Garrett has worked in various museum positions in the UK including The National Trust and The Courtauld Gallery in London, working primarily with European Art and global contemporary art. In November 2018, Dr Garrett moved to Memphis. Here, she has worked on exhibitions including Power & Absence: Women in Europe, 1500 - 1680, Mona Hatoum: Misbah, and On Christopher Street: Transgender Portraits by Mark Seliger.
Program Recordings
Resources
The 901 Black American Portraits Soundtrack
Listen to a soundtrack of Memphis music that exemplifies Black Love, Power, and Joy. The 901 Black American Portraits Soundtrack celebrates the vibrant legacy and future of Black musicians in the city of Memphis. This playlist was curated by Jared “Jay B” Boyd, a Memphis-based multimedia artist, journalist, DJ, and on-air personality.
MCA Exhibition Questionnaire
Help us generate the fullest picture possible of the MCA experience.
Submitting a questionnaire, which includes a request for an image of an artwork, is essential to be considered for part of the exhibition.
Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?
The American art theorist Linda Nochlin (1931-2017) posed this question as the title of a pioneering article in 1971. This essay was considered one of the first major works of Feminist art history, it has become a set text for those who study art internationally, and it is influential in many other fields.