Ellington

As any art textbook will tell you, perspective is important. Whether you're painting the Sistine Chapel or snapping pictures of pop stars, it's a crucial element of visual design. For Vicksburg photographer Glynn Fought, the key to creating an interesting work of art is often as simple as finding another perspective.

Though he's earned plenty of fans for his photos, Fought, 60, is relatively new to the visual-arts game. He has written songs professionally since his late teen years, but only bought his first "serious" camera 11 years ago.

"Part of it has to do with being a little older and learning how to take a deeper look," he says of his shift in creative interests. "I don't think a lot of people realize how easy it is to make the transition from one type of art (to another). What I learned from writing songs all those years, it just seems like a logical extension."

Fought considers himself a songwriter rather than a guitarist. Years ago, when a friend showed him the Drop D tuning, changing the note of the first string from E to D, he became enamored with alternate tunings. He started composing almost exclusively in nonstandard tunings. In fact, his songwriting inspired him to enter the realm of macro photography—the use of extreme close-ups.

"It's that process of discovery. 'Hey, let me put this in some weird tuning and see what I come up with,'" Fought says. "That is really related to a lot of what I do with photography."

One of his latest collections, "Home through an Artist's Eyes," focuses on some of the unseen beauty in Vicksburg locations he passed every day as a child. But his photographs don't necessarily show the most tourist-friendly locales of his hometown. In fact, many are a direct contrast to the picture-book images that are often used to show historic sites.

"When I came back here, it was an exploration of the area I grew up in through the lens of a camera," he says. "One of the main things I've told some other artists is that I don't want to produce something that looks like a postcard. I want to produce a work of art."

The collection includes intensely close shots of settings such as the Cedar Hill Cemetery and the Old Courthouse Museum, places Fought saw countless times without realizing their artistic potential. "It's isolating some particular element of it," he says.

Originally, Fought didn't plan on moving back to Mississippi. Two years ago, during a Christmas visit with his parents, he fell out of an office chair and fractured his shoulder blade. The injury kept him from driving for several months, and during that time, Vicksburg's extensive past sparked his passion for photography. Ultimately, he decided to stay for good.

With "Home through an Artist's Eyes" completed for now, Fought is turning his attention to a bigger challenge: cataloguing notable spots in Mississippi's historic cemeteries. While the project is in its early stages, Fought and a co-writer are already researching bizarre plots for a book, including the three "official" burial sites of blues legend Robert Johnson and the monument to Douglas the camel, a quadruped casualty of the Civil War.

"I love going out and just taking pictures with the intent of trying to produce art, but to have a goal to work around is exciting," Fought says. "I'm as excited about digging up the stories now as I am about the art."

Visit Glynn Fought's photo galleries at glynnfought.photoshelter.com or find his page on Facebook.