shelia turner
A documentary narrative photographer, shelia turner’s approach goes beyond seizing the metaphorical moment and concentrates itself in the value of long-term photography studies. Her photographs bridge the worlds of art, academia and activism while providing a platform for the examination of the United States of America life and culture.
In 2008 she received an MA in Social Documentation, with a specialty in still photography, from the University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA. Her photographs are included in many public and private collections including the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA.
shelia turner was the founder of Sistagraphy, the collective of African American women photographers, the creator and executive producer of the innovative photoSLAM combining social networking, technology and photography as tools for community building.
In 2018 she was awarded the 2018 Ebon Dooley Arts & Justice Award. She had three images included in the City of Atlanta Art on the Beltline, “Journey to Freedom”[2017] public art mural. In 2013 shelia turner was an Atlanta Partnership And Learning (APAL) photography artist in residence using photography as a form of activism with high school juniors and seniors. Fall 2011 she was awarded a McColl Center for Visual Arts and the first Levine Museum of the New South [Charlotte, NC] artist residency in photography. In the same year, she curated “Charting the Course: African American Achievers in the 20th Century”, a photography exhibition in the Cary-McPheeters Gallery of the Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History in Atlanta, GA.