Alex Harris (b. 1949) was raised in the South and lives in Durham, NC with his wife, Margaret Sartor, and their two children. Harris has photographed extensively in the American South, New Mexico, Alaska, and Cuba. His work is represented in major collections including The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Addison Gallery of American Art, The High Museum of Art in Atlanta, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship in Photography, a Rockefeller Foundation Humanities Fellowship, and a Lyndhurst Prize. His photographs have been exhibited in numerous museums including two solo exhibitions at the International Center of Photography in New York. As a photographer and editor, Harris has published fourteen books including River of Traps (with William deBuys) a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in general non-fiction.

Harris spent his residency editing, Why We Are Here: Mobile and the Spirit of a Southern City, a book he co-authored with world-renowned naturalist, biologist and author E.O. Wilson.

“When I was offered a residency at A Studio in the Woods … I didn’t quite appreciate what was being offered.  Now I see what that I was being offered the opportunity to enter another world entirely: a unique natural landscape and human environment where my work would be supported and where I could put aside all distractions and truly focus on the writing project I had not been able to tackle at home.”

“I was being offered the opportunity to enter another world entirely: a unique natural landscape and human environment where my work would be supported and where I could put aside all distractions and truly focus on the writing project I had not been able to tackle at home.”