Stephen B. Morton is an award-winning independent photojournalist living in Savannah, Georgia. His work was recently selected to appear in the American Photography 37 annual award book representing the best pictures from 2020.
Morton’s work is included in the permanent collections of the International Africa-American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina, the City of Savannah Municipal Archives, and the collection at the Georgia Ports Authority.
During his successful career spanning four decades, Morton's work has landed on the front pages of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
In addition to those esteemed publications, Morton contributes to the Associated Press, Getty Images, Bloomberg News, ZUMA Press, and European Pressphoto Agency.
He covered the past four Presidents of the United States, international news events such as the Mariel boatlift in Key West, Florida, Hurricane Katrina in Gulf Port, Mississippi, the Emanuel Baptist AME Church shootings in Charleston, South Carolina, and several national news and sporting events throughout the Southeast.
In the past few years, Morton has refocused his passion for photography on fine art abstracts centered around the shipping industry in Georgia. Inspired by the nexus of light and graphic elements of rusting metal and machinery in this industrial landscape, his images use strong composition with asymmetrical elements to capture the natural wear that occurs to the hulls of the world’s largest container ships.
Images span from golden sunlight reflecting off the glossy paint protecting maintenance to the nuances of sparkling light shimmering from the welded seams of an 80,000-metric ton ship.
The contrast of how details tell the story of the greater mass has been a focal point of Morton’s work for decades. In photojournalism, a broad-reaching story is told by the smallest detail. Less is more. It is that philosophy that epitomizes Morton’s work.
Morton’s education in photography began at the Tennessee Williams Fine Arts Center in Key West, Florida, and continued at the University of Florida’s College of Journalism and Communications in Gainesville, Florida.
He found inspiration from artists such as Swiss photographer Robert Frank, American documentary photographer Dorothea Lange, Eugene Richards, and American photographer Duane Michals. After college, the foundation of his photography solidified during his 14 years as a staff photographer at the Gainesville Sun in Gainesville, Florida.
Having the pedigree of a photojournalist for 40 years has imprinted the ethics of an unbiased journalist onto his work's fundamental and distinctive characteristics. The creative palette of a working photojournalist can be constrained by the editorial norms of newspapers, news magazines, and wire services.
Much like the photographers that inspire his career, Morton strives to gently manipulate the medium and communicate a narrative rich with layers of visual information. His work does not rely on the heavy post-processing manipulation offered in modern software. His vision centers on the art of capturing the nuances of composition and light, which is congruous with film photography.
Contact Stephen B. Morton Photography at 912.596.3686 or art@stephenbmorton.com
