Every city has a shadow, every town a Drake — so runs the epigraph of Tamara Reynolds’s first book. For four years Reynolds immersed herself in the lives of people existing just above survival on one square block in the shadows of the Drake Motel in Nashville, Tennessee. The historic motel has a storied past, with rumored visits by Elvis Presley and use as a film location for stars such as River Phoenix and Dolly Parton. In The Drake, however, Reynolds turns her lens on those less known, living with addiction on the margins of society.

Reynolds is a documentary photographer whose unflinching eye considers what it is like to be human in today’s society, focusing in particular on the lives of those who are usually unseen. Her work has received significant acclaim and numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship Grant for 2021, the Santa Fe Center Project Launch Grant, a Tennessee Arts Commission Individual Artist Grant, a Puffin Grant, and the 2021 BarTur Photo Award: Faces of Humanity.

Sarah Hermanson Meister, former Curator in the Department of Photography at MoMA, writes that Reynolds weaves into her compelling images a sense of urgency, adding: “I am in awe whenever I encounter a body of work that seems to open up new paths towards understanding the world around us.”

“I’ve been sober since 2002, and I recognized the despair, the lie you tell yourself that keeps you in the cycle of addiction,” Reynolds says. “How you keep lowering the bar to hold on to that one thing you believe is keeping you alive but it’s actually killing you. The specificity of the subject allowed me to delve deeply into a world that was far removed from my own life yet perilously close had I not found recovery.”

Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Reynolds has lived there all her life. The Drake is published by Dewi Lewis Publishing in hardback: 80 pages, 44 colour plates, 265mm x 220mm. ISBN 9781911306641.