Mary Atwood

Author and fine art photographer Mary Atwood is a long time resident of the First Coast area whose deep appreciation of its natural beauty, rich history and diverse culture is often reflected in her work. Her fine art photography is included in numerous public, private and corporate collections in the United States and France. She was the recipient of the prestigious Art Ventures grant in 2011, has done commissioned work for MOCA Jacksonville, and was invited by the Sister Cities organization of Nantes, France to exhibit her First Coast Reflections project as part of the inaugural celebration for la Maison des Etates-Unis (the American House) during the summer of 2013. Her photographs have been exhibited in galleries, museums and public art venues, with a total of sixteen solo shows in the last two years alone. To date, her works have won more than fifty awards in local, regional and national juried exhibitions.

The goal of Ms. Atwood’s First Coast Reflections project is to bring a more personal perspective to the history of the North Florida and Southeast Georgia area. To achieve this goal, the works in the collection focus on intimate vignettes from the historic homes and workplaces of the people who settled this region. The subject matter ranges from the very simple homes of the early Spanish settlers of St. Augustine to the ruins of the elegant Carnegie mansion on Cumberland Island, and from seventeenth century architecture of the Castillo de San Marcos to the nineteenth century engineering of the Boulware Springs Waterworks of Gainesville.

Ms. Atwood's quest to capture the intimate side of North Florida history culminated in the release of her book, Historic Homes of Florida's First Coast. Written as an outgrowth of her First Coast Reflections fine art photography project, the book features both interior and exterior images captured at a variety of historic sites within a 150 mile radius of Jacksonville. Among the homes featured are Spanish Colonial structures located in St. Augustine, the Kingsley Plantation house, and simple “Cracker” style houses. Collectively, they span a time period of more than 250 years. Residents of the homes included exiled European royalty, writer Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, musician Frederick Delius and a number of lesser known but equally important early settlers of the North Florida area. The book also includes more than 90 images, 30 of which are vintage photographs and 60 original photographs created by Ms. Atwood - many from the First Coast Reflections collection, as well as images created exclusively for the book.