Sex Pistols, Atlanta 1978: Photographs by Ron Sherman

CRITIC’S PICK: Ron Sherman has been taking photographs of Atlanta and its people for more than fifty years. Jimmy Carter, Hank Aaron, and Coretta Scott King are just three of the local notables in his extensive archive. One night in 1978, on assignment from Newsweek, Sherman attended a show at the Great Southeast Music Hall headlined by the Sex Pistols. It was the beginning of the notorious punk band’s one and only U.S. tour. Bill King, a writer for what was then known as the Atlanta Constitution, described the occasion as “a full blown international media event” with at least 40 television and print reporters from England and the United States in attendance. Sherman shot multiple rolls that night; this exhibit highlights some of the best of them. “Ron’s photographs document a seminal band at the key moment — the arrival of punk in Atlanta and the South,” says Randy Gue, assistant director at Emory University’s Rose Library and curator of the exhibition. — Kevin C. Madigan