July 1, 2026
Our America: 250 Years of Independence, Innovation, and Creativity features art, architecture, and nature across the Newfields campus as part of national celebrations marking 250 years of the United States’s independence. One highlight is an installation of three newly purchased photographs by the Atlanta-based photographer Sheila Pree Bright. Each is from her acclaimed 2005 series Suburbia, which documents an African American suburban community.
Bright spoke with Anna Stein, Associate Curator of Works on Paper, about Suburbia:
Stein: You have such a wide range of work and many of your photography projects address different aspects and complications of the American experience: In Young Americans, college-age folks posed with an American flag and reflected on what being American meant to them, and #1960Now combines images of past and present activists to explore parallels between the movements of the 1960s and today. What does Suburbia reveal about the American story?
Bright: Suburbia examines one of America's most enduring and influential landscapes, not just as a place, but as an idea. For generations, the suburb has symbolized the American Dream: homeownership, stability, safety, and opportunity. But beneath that promise are more complex stories about race, class, access, exclusion, and identity.
My inspiration for Suburbia stemmed from a simple observation: The widely circulated images in the media rarely, if ever, showcased the quiet, nuanced, everyday moments of African American life in the suburbs. The stories that were beamed into households were often rooted in stereotypes, with a tendency to lean into the chaotic, the tragic, or the exceptional. This overshadowed the truth that countless African American families were, and are, leading lives steeped in tradition, community, and ordinary beauty, just like any other American suburbia.
The American South, with all its history, complexity, and diversity, is a tapestry woven of countless stories. In many ways, Suburbia became a turning point for me because it touched on questions that are central to the American experience itself: Who belongs? What does success look like? And how do our communities shape our understanding of ourselves and one another?
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Stein: Furnishings and decorative objects have long helped families preserve a sense of identity and history. For Black Americans in particular, photography and personalized domestic spaces have been discussed as carrying more weight as acts of self-definition and resilience in the face of misrepresentation and exclusion. On the other side of that coin, letting an outsider into that space might feel especially vulnerable. How did the families who opened their homes to you decide to participate?
Bright: Many of the families came through personal networks, community connections, referrals, and conversations that often unfolded over time. I spent a great deal of time explaining the project, listening to their stories, and making sure they understood my intentions. The photographs were never about exposing private lives.
For many of the families, participating was an opportunity to contribute to a broader representation of Black life in America, one that moved beyond stereotypes and acknowledged the diversity of experiences within suburban communities. I think they understood that the project was not only documenting their individual families but also creating a larger portrait of belonging, identity, and home.
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Stein: Untitled 27, the photograph of the closet interior, is so striking. It is of the most intimate of spaces, and contains clues to a carefully preserved family history and military service. You have shared before that your photography in general is inspired by your experiences growing up with a father in the Army. Were the military uniforms a surprise encounter as you photographed the house? I would love to hear more about what this image meant to you.
Bright: Yes, the image was particularly resonant for me because of my upbringing as the daughter of a career Army officer. Military life was a defining part of my childhood, so when I encountered the uniforms in the closet, they immediately caught my attention. They weren't something I had specifically gone looking for, but they felt deeply familiar.
What moved me was the way the closet functioned almost like an archive. There were the military uniforms, carefully preserved, alongside family photographs, including the vintage portraits of two sisters from decades earlier. Together, these objects told a story that extended across generations. They spoke to service, family history, memory, and the desire to preserve connections to the past.
Suburbia challenged assumptions about what suburban life looks like and what stories are held within these homes. It reveals a rich, layered history that might otherwise remain unseen, reminding us that every home contains narratives that are both deeply personal and part of a broader American story.
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Stein: You pursued an anonymity and universality in Suburbia that balances the intimacy of the scenes. However, it was created in 2005 and now I see a lot of the culture and design of the early 2000s in it, especially associated with the housing bubble. Looking back with this historical distance of twenty years, do you see parts of the series in a different light?
Bright: When I made Suburbia in 2005, I was primarily interested in questions of identity, belonging, and how Black families were defining themselves within suburban America. I intentionally avoided anchoring the work too closely to individual narratives because I wanted the photographs to be on a universal level.
Looking at the series twenty years later, I am struck by how much it has become a historical archive. The issues of homeownership, economic mobility, community, representation, and who has access to the promise associated with suburban life are still very much part of our national conversation today. This level of the middle-class is vanishing.
Stein: These Suburbia photographs are chromogenic prints (for our readers, a kind of “traditional” method of color photography using light-sensitive reactions). Many people might only ever experience your work as digital images on the internet, but your photographs are made as physical objects. What do you like about that medium?
Bright: I came of age as a photographer working with film and traditional color printing processes, so chromogenic prints were a natural choice for Suburbia. What I have always appreciated about the medium is its richness and subtlety. The color transitions, the depth, and the way light is rendered in a chromogenic print create an experience that feels different from viewing an image on a screen or shooting with a digital camera.
I think photographs are not just images, they are objects. A print occupies space with the viewer. It has a scale, a surface, and a physical presence that shapes how we engage with it. That material experience has always been important to me because it encourages a different kind of attention.
Looking at Suburbia today, I am reminded that many of the photographs are about preservation and memory, an archive. In a way, the chromogenic print participates in those same ideas. It is a tangible object that carries an image through time, much like the family photographs, heirlooms, and personal artifacts that appear throughout the series.
