courtney whitlow

Courtney is a Memphis-based multimedia artist with an emphasis in photography and installation. 

She was born in a military hospital in El Paso, and as an “army brat” the first decade of her life was chock with transitions where drawing was a comfortable constant. As a homeschooler, her art was mostly self-taught and self-guided until she began attending New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) in highschool. There she fell in love with film photography and the darkroom. The pencil was replaced with a camera and she was convinced that it was her calling. 

At Memphis College of Art, she continued to expand and hone her abilities but found many of the teaching strategies to be exhausting, emphasizing verbal concept over visual intuition in a way that was constricting and paralyzing even after graduation. This was compounded by various attempts to use photography in the workforce that left little energy or desire to engage with it on a personal level; but she continued to photograph, secreting roll after roll onto external harddrives. 

ALBUM is composed of unreleased photos taken between 2013-2022 and is the first true series of personal work released since college; a result of realization that her images needed no further link than that she had taken them. 

Preserving photography as practice for herself has been an essential step in healing. Collaborations, such as her most recent show FLOATING with painted Abby Shoaf, have provided a soft reentry, redeveloping reliance on instinct, spontaneity, and enjoyment rather than external feedback.