The Drake

Every city has a shadow. Every town has a Drake. For four years Tamara Reynolds immersed herself in the lives of the people existing just above survival on one square block in the shadows of the Drake Motel in Nashville, Tennessee. Although the historic motel has a storied past with rumoured visits by Elvis Presley and as a popular location for film shoots with stars such as River Phoenix and Dolly Parton, in The Drake Reynolds turns her lens on those less known living with addiction on the margins of society.

Tamara Reynolds “weave[s] into [her] compelling images a sense of urgency... I am in awe whenever I encounter a body of work that seems to open up new paths towards understanding the world arounds us.” – Sarah Hermanson Meister, former Curator, Department of Photography, MOMA.

Tamara Reynolds is a documentary photographer whose unflinching eye considers what it is like to be human in today’s society. In particular, her work focuses on the lives of those who are usually unseen. The work has already received significant acclaim and numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship Grant for 2021, the prestigious Santa Fe Center Project Launch Grant, a Tennessee Arts Commission Individual Artist Grant, a Puffin Grant, and the 2021 BarTur Photo Award: Faces of Humanity.

“I’ve been sober since 2002, and I recognized the despair, the lie you tell yourself that keeps you in the cycle of addiction,” Reynolds says. “How you keep lowering the bar to hold on to that one thing you believe is keeping you alive but it’s actually killing you. The specificity of the subject allowed me to delve deeply into a world that was far removed from my own life yet perilously close had I not found recovery. ”

Tamara Reynolds was born in Nashville, Tennessee, and has lived there all her life.