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Credit: George Parker |
As cranes continue to reshape the skyline of Nashville, the city’s creative identity is evolving alongside its rapid growth. For documentary photographer Tamara Reynolds, that transformation is something she has witnessed, and worked through, over decades.
“I’ve been shooting 50 years now,” Reynolds said. “I went on an academic tour in high school, and everybody was asking, ‘So what are you going to do?’ I was painfully homesick on this trip, and the only thing that brought me any kind of relief or solace was taking photos. So when I got back, I just announced I was going to be a photographer.”
Nashville-born Reynolds chose to build her life with the city as her home base long before it became a national hub for growth and investment, even as much of her commercial work took her elsewhere.
That decision shaped both her trajectory and her understanding of Nashville’s limitations at the time, particularly for visual artists.
She often worked outside of Nashville, traveling for assignments and building a client base beyond the city, but always returned home to Davidson County.
“If you needed to see anything, you went to New York or L.A. or Atlanta or Chicago,” Reynolds said. “It wasn’t Nashville. I never worked in Nashville as a commercial photographer, and I was one of the very few females in the industry to begin with. So I had to make my living outside of Nashville, and that was fine. Nashville was a small town.”
After earning her bachelor's in fine arts at Middle Tennessee State University, she worked in labs and assisted commercial photographers before launching her own business in the mid-1990s.
| 'Her work reflects a quieter truth about Nashville’s creative economy: that behind the momentum are artists building lives through persistence, trade-offs and long-term commitment.' |
Over time, she developed a dual track, balancing commercial work with editorial assignments and personal projects. Her work has appeared in NBC News, Bloomberg Businessweek, Forbes, The New York Times Magazine and The Wall Street Journal and she has provided photography for numerous national advertising campaigns.
“Editorial has a lot more freedom,” Reynolds said. “Advertising, although you are hired for your style, has parameters you have to meet, and it takes some creativity away. There’s more production involved, more marketing involved. It’s very competitive. So I continued editorial work because it allowed more creative input, and I also did small projects I could fit in between that for fine art.”
It seems another crucial fact in Reynolds' journey is that — even at the height of her commercial career— Reynolds never abandoned her fine-arts practice.
Those smaller, independent projects, done without the guarantee of income or visibility, would eventually define her work, which has resulted in dozens of projects, awards, grants, lectures, teaching appointments and more, as outlined on her website.
“Don’t give up your practice,” Reynolds said. “Even though I was a commercial photographer, I still practiced my art. I just did not have the complete language and the know-how at the time, but I was still doing it.”
In the early 2000s, as advertising budgets shrank and the commercial photography industry became more competitive, Reynolds lost her marketing representative and began stepping away from advertising work altogether. Without that income stream, funding her own personal projects became more difficult.
“I pretty much stopped marketing for advertising because it was so much money, budgets were getting smaller, and of course it was very competitive,” Reynolds said. “I was at a place in my life where I didn’t have children, so I had time to go back and get my master’s in photography.”
While still in her 50s, she completed her Master in Fine Arts in Photography degree at Hartford Art School of the University of Hartford, creating an opportunity to return to what she had always wanted to do.
“It was in a sense a way to amend that earlier path,” Reynolds said. “I wasn’t ready to quit photography. This is my practice. So I thought, why don’t you go back and get your master's and just see what this photobook world is all about.”
During that program, she created The Drake, her effort during 2014-2019 to focus on a single block in Nashville that had, for a time, escaped the city’s rapid redevelopment.
Located just a mile from downtown, the block sat for decades in the shadow of rapid growth, a place where many residents were living just above survival level, as the rest of the city expanded around them.
As with much of her work, her evocative study of The Drake reached audiences at home and abroad, including via The Guardian and other media. Her book, The Drake, was published in 2021 by UK-US publisher Dewi Lewis.
The Drake project was also deeply personal. Reynolds, who has been in recovery since 2002, was drawn to the community of people she was photographing — many of whom were struggling with addiction.
“I learned the importance of empathy,” Reynolds said. “Addiction is a disease that people don’t seem to understand. And when I do my personal work, it may be looking out into the world, but a lot of it is where I am in myself and how that affects the way I view the world.”
The Drake project marked a turning point.
In 2021, Reynolds' work earned her a Guggenheim Fellowship, which the Foundation says "centers the talents and instincts of the Fellows, whose passions often have broad and immediate social impact."
Reynolds explained that the Fellows achievement provided both validation and the financial means to continue. The Guggenheim Fellowship, one of the most competitive grants for artists in the United States, is awarded to individuals with exceptional creative ability.
“The grant was a lifesaver,” Reynolds said. “It gave me financial support to do the work, but it also gave me this sense that I chose wisely. That I was capable as a photographer. To be awarded this grant, which is substantial, by peers was a dream come true.”
The grant allowed her to keep going in a field where sustainability is never guaranteed.
“It gave me the money, and then it also gave me the validation to spend the money,” Reynolds said. “Because at first I was like, why am I doing this? Nobody’s looking at it. Nobody’s seeing it. Yes, it’s my practice, but it was very expensive. And when you’re not making money, it’s hard to continue, because photography is very expensive.”
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Even now, Reynolds is candid about the economics of her work. Photobooks and exhibitions rarely generate profit, and long-term documentary projects require ongoing investment.
“To print an exhibition is expensive, to publish a book, it’s not a money-making gig,” Reynolds said. “It’s more that I have created work, and I saw the value of it, and I want to show what I’ve done. I have a voice, so I publish it. There’s no profit.”
Instead, sustainability in the fine arts comes from structure behind the scenes.
After completing her master’s degree, Reynolds returned to school again to earn a certification in special education, a move that allowed her to secure stable work while continuing to build her photography practice.
She later worked as a special education teacher in the Metro Nashville Public Schools, using that structure to support the slower, long-term pace of her artistic projects before eventually transitioning into university teaching roles.
Today, Reynolds funds her work through a combination of teaching, grants and selective editorial assignments. She is currently a Lecturer at Vanderbilt University and Adjunct Professor at Belmont University.
“My teaching is what is supporting me right now for my photography,” Reynolds said. “If I want to do anything more then I need to get a grant. I’m constantly applying for grants because this kind of work, it doesn’t fund itself.”
That balance allows her to continue pursuing long-term projects, including her ongoing work documenting Melungeon communities in East Tennessee — historically marginalized, mixed-ancestry communities rooted in Appalachia.
“My every day is never the same except the scheduling with school,” Reynolds said. “I teach on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., and then whenever I can, whenever I get a job, I will fit it in between that. I try to align my schedule to have long blocks of time in case I can go away for a few days.”
As Nashville grows, Reynolds sees a creative ecosystem that is expanding, but still uneven.
“It’s always been an artistic city, but more for the music,” Reynolds said. “Now I think there are eyes on Nashville. The influx of different influences has brought recognition to the arts. Are we up to snuff? Probably not. We’re still a small town. But, a lot of things are growing.”
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She also acknowledged that, with the rest of society, creatives must periodically determine their responses to broader challenges.
Asked about the impact of the expanding use of artificial intelligence-enabled tools across sectors, she responded:
"I personally do not us AI in my work nor do I photograph anything that would be AI generated. But in general, I see it affecting creative spaces with consequences to authorship, technical skill and copyright.
"The AI generator training is becoming so frighteningly good at mimicking artists’ work that I cannot even enjoy work without doubting the authenticity.
"It is sad to know that skills respected and honed over time may become obsolete. Everywhere you look, we are being manipulated in political and commercial sphere and AI is only getting better at it. What is it going to look like without some kind of management?"
She said her concern was recently heightened by "fake Pro-Trump AI-generated avatars not being identified as AI-generated. And the ability to create avatars is only getting easier."
Looking ahead, she said her advice to emerging creatives reflects the reality she has navigated for decades: stability and creativity must coexist.
“Getting a group of people to form a critique group or a support system, I believe in that,” Reynolds said. “Find a full-time gig, whether that’s teaching or assisting, but don’t give up your practice.”
In a city defined by rapid change, Reynolds’ career offers a model built slowly and shaped by constant reinvention — a portfolio career pieced together through commercial work, teaching, grants and long-term projects. Her work reflects a quieter truth about Nashville’s creative economy: that behind the momentum are artists building lives through persistence, trade-offs and long-term commitment.
“It’s tough,” Reynolds said. “It’s tough being an artist. But I’m not ready to quit photography. It’s just what I do.” VNC
• Rhea Patney is a senior at Vanderbilt University studying public health and science communication. She has spent eight years in student journalism, covering news, women’s sports and lifestyle beats in St. Louis and Nashville. Next, she is to attend Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, to pursue a master's in healthcare administration, while continuing to write freelance.
Note: The 'money cloud' and AI-in-eyeball illustrations above were created by VNC via Copilot.
.last edited 0710 20 April 2026