WMA Artist-in-Residence Sydney A. Foster

Spring 2020

Her work explores beauty and fashion, capturing the essence of the men and women she photographs and showing the rawness and transparency of her subjects. Sydney A. Foster is passionate about the African-American community – especially the women – and ensuring that they are represented equally in all things.

Foster will spend several weeks over the spring and summer in the Wiregrass community, exploring and capturing what makes Houston County unique. Her intent is to create a more colorful and unified community by discovering the unseen gems of the county, be it it’s rich agricultural history, raw and authentic faces, and places of the Wiregrass. She has completed similar projects in Montgomery, Alabama, the subject of her first museum exhibition in 2019 at Wiregrass Museum of Art and Macon, Georgia, as part of a group exhibition “Bright City,” curated by Dashboard, U.S.

Sydney A. Foster, 25, is a veteran, image-maker, and creative director based in Montgomery, Alabama. She was hand-selected at the age of 21 by Alabama Governor Kay Ivey to be a staff photographer. She is a U.S. Senior Airman who was recently deployed to Southwest Asia with the 187th Alabama Air National Guard. Sydney has worked under prestigious photographers including Keith Major, Danielle Levitt, and Jason Rodgers. She owns a multicultural creative agency, USSPECTS, which is an entrepreneurial ecosystem, cultural space + safe place to develop creative, conscious and fresh works while promoting positivity + unity. She received an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts in 2019. Foster believes that being able to inspire people through the beauty of imagery is more than power — it is life.