‘Light in These Hills: Oxford, Mississippi,’ a retrospective photography exhibit opens on November 2nd, 2024 in Hattiesburg, Mississippi at Prospect Gallery.  This exhibition is an homage and record of Shemper's life as a young photographer/writer in Oxford’s vibrant arts and literary community. 

Shemper’s photographs will be on view for two months, with an opening reception on November 2, 2024. Adapted from his book of the same title (forthcoming 2025) this exhibition of 40 photographs features landscapes and scenes of cultural life in Oxford, at Ole Miss and in surrounding Lafayette county, made between 1998 and 2015. These documentary-style images are interwoven with portraits of neighbors, friends and immediate family as well as local artists and icons, notably Ron “Ronzo” Shapiro, musicians Kenny and David Kimbrough Jr., Charlie Mars and Tyler Keith, and writers Barry Hannah, Larry Brown and Beth Ann Fennelly.

The “Light in These Hills: Oxford, Mississippi” exhibition was born from an inspired family collaboration between David Shemper, the founder of Prospect Gallery at Prospect on Main, and his sister Rachel Shemper Schwartz, gallery curator, and their brother Adam Shemper, the artist. 

The Cruel & Unusual exhibition left Holland last month and traveled to Brooklyn for Photoville:  "a fiesty mix of exhibitions, lectures, hands-on workshops, night-time projections...." Photographs from Portraits of Invisible Men were part of the group exhibit and were hung in one of many shipping containers at Pier 3 along the Brooklyn waterfront. 

Selected photos and text from my series Portraits of Invisible Men: Photographs from the Louisiana State Penitentiary will be part of a prison photography group exhibition, Cruel and Unusual, in Groningen, Holland at the Noorderlicht Gallery, opening February 17, 2012.