Art Magazine Dedicates Issue to My Photographs!

DekUnu Magazine published American Runaway, 11 Photographs, 11 Essays, Interview

I am switching up the newsletter a bit this week to share exciting news! My ongoing visual project, “American Runaway,” which investigates myth and legend in the South, has been published in DekUnu Magazine digitally and in print. DekUnu is a nonprofit magazine that publishes a monthly issue dedicated to a single photographic artist.

The issue looks like this: 11 photographs, 11 essays, and a 3,000-word interview with me. The photographs span from protests over Confederate monuments to a country store owner looking at her empty parking lot at closing time. They chronicle change and stagnation, triumphs and failures. They ask, “Where do we go from here?” The short essays deal with all my experiences growing up in rural Mississippi - ghosts, girls, lonely two-lanes, Oxford and Faulkner, Yazoo and Morris, the murderer in the creek. And in the interview, I grapple with the politics behind my work, where it all began, and the stories behind some of the pictures. All my heart is here, and I’ll investigate these places and people for the rest of my life.

I wrote specifically about two towns in this edition: Amory and Rolling Fork, Mississippi. Almost two weeks ago, both towns were devastated by a series of tornados that killed over 20 people across Mississippi. I had the opportunity to return home to see Amory and speak with many people who lost everything they had, and they need help now and will in continuing weeks, months, and years. The magazine splits proceeds gained from print and online sales 50/50 with the artist (they use their 50% to keep the publication going). I will be donating the entirety of my portion to the ongoing recovery and relief efforts in Mississippi.

Click here to access the online version of Dekunu’s April edition, “American Runaway.” It is free in April and will cost a couple of bucks after. Click here to purchase the print edition for $19. It includes a permanent online copy.

The curator opens the issue with this:
”Call it rebellion, sturm und drang, or just teen-age, but running away, at one level of extremity or another, is part of the picture for most of us growing up. Some stay put, some escape. For some “gone” is forever, but more than a few escapees have made great art about the look back.  Lukas Flippo looks back, in this edition of Dek Unu, at Amory, Mississippi, a quintessential small town, in the state that gave us Muddy Waters, William Eggleston, and William Faulkner. Small towns seem to inspire, particularly in creative types, the urge to bolt.  Following a plan he established at 14, Lukas has found his way from Amory to Yale, then from New Haven to a successful start in a career as a photojournalist and documentarian, and then back again for a look with new eyes at his hometown and, by extension, at the ways the rural South has changed, and the ways it hasn’t.  While outrage and embarrassment often motivate the burning desire to escape, artist-escapees often realize that big cities are not very different from small towns, that everywhere is everywhere, and there’s more to “home” than stereotypes and simple explanations.

After making 200,000+ photos as a sports, editorial, and feature photographer, Flippo sees entire stories through his viewfinder. He frames extraneous or shadow details that others might crop to add texture and extraordinary depth to even the most routine photo assignments. These are confident, crafted images by a young master.  Combined with his words, stream-of-consciousness captures of decisive moments themselves, Lukas’s humane visual and literary storytelling is deeply impactful and worth a second (and third) look. William Faulkner is alleged to have said, ‘To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.’ Our thanks to Lukas Flippo for adding facts and feelings to what we understand.”