Photographer Jeremy M. Lange Surveys the State of North Carolina Tobacco in After Golden Leaf

One of Durham's many contradictions is that even though half the buildings have "tobacco" in the name, you can't smoke anywhere. In After Golden Leaf, his thesis exhibit for Duke's graduate program in experimental and documentary arts, photojournalist and documentarian (and former INDY photographer) Jeremy M. Lange turns his incisive lens and striking compositions on the shades of tobacco-industry history as they linger in an increasingly technologized and smoke-free city. The photos in the series sweep up the history of tobacco farming, the forging and dispersal of the communities that grew around it, the evolving landscape of North Carolina after big tobacco, and broader issues of dislocation and memory in the post-industrial U.S. After this opening reception, there's another on April 20 for Third Friday, and the exhibit runs through May 4.