John Edwin May is a photographic artist based in Knoxville, Tennessee. For more than four decades, he has photographed people, communities, and places, often returning to his subjects over months or years. His work reflects a longstanding interest in everyday life, overlooked details, and the ways people interact with their surroundings.
May’s documentary projects have taken him into the lives of an Appalachian tobacco-farming family, the world of independent professional wrestling, and communities where traditions and ways of life are gradually disappearing. His series One Season follows the McFarland family through the work and rhythms of tobacco farming in East Tennessee. In RINGSIDE and Bell Time, he examines the spectacle of professional wrestling, turning his attention as often to the spectators and backstage activity as to the matches themselves.
His ongoing series, Seen/Unseen: When the Water Falls, began with observations of the changing shorelines of East Tennessee reservoirs. As seasonal water levels recede, roads, foundations, discarded objects, and remnants of earlier landscapes become visible. May photographs these temporary revelations, often returning to the same locations as conditions change.
Other projects include Judgemental INK, a series of portraits and personal stories examining assumptions about people with tattoos, and PHONE, a photographic record of public telephones and their gradual disappearance from the American landscape.
May’s RINGSIDE series was selected for Photolucida’s Critical Mass Top 200 in 2022. In 2026, his photograph Silo, from Seen/Unseen, was selected for The Photo Review International Photography Competition, juried by Dr. Sarah Kennel.
May earned his MFA from East Tennessee State University in 2010. His career includes more than three decades of teaching photography at colleges, universities, and arts institutions throughout East Tennessee. His photographic education also includes studies with Mary Ellen Mark, Joyce Tenneson, John Sexton, and other photographers whose work and teaching have contributed to his development.
