Sometimes the hardest place to photograph is in your own backyard: When everything is familiar, it’s a challenge to make things look interesting. Yet, Tamara Reynolds has done just that in “Southern Route,” looking hard at the American South, which she calls home, and offering a searing, honest portrayal of the country’s most stereotyped region.

She knows that for some, the South evokes images of poverty and obesity, memories of racism and slavery, or words like “hillbilly” and “redneck.” The area that divided the country 150 years ago is stuck between pride and progress. Ms. Reynolds looks beyond these generalities to capture the genuine spirit of Southerners.

Although there is evidence of stereotypes, she said in her artist statement, “I have also learned that there is a restrained dignity and a generous affection that Southerners possess intrinsically.”

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Ms. Reynolds, a native of Nashville, defines the South as spanning from Texas to West Virginia. Many photographers have come from elsewhere to document the region, but Ms. Reynolds’s connection and familiarity with the region add extra depth to her perspective. The people she chooses to photograph may not immediately catch someone else’s eye. “It’s not somebody that’s strikingly obvious,” she said. “It’s more about the simplicity or the gesture that intrigues me.”

One image shows a mother working at a convenience store, operating the cash register with her left hand while cradling her child with her right. “That is so ubiquitous in the South that a Southerner may look over it,” she said. “I have to be purposefully mindful sometimes while I’m going through the day saying: ‘Wait a minute, this is an interesting situation. I need to photograph it.’ ”

Ms. Reynolds began the project in 2011 to explore parts of the South’s history that she did not learn in her own education. She describes a sense of shame tied to the region’s history of racial inequality and association with religious fanaticism, which she prefers to confront rather than avoid. “The only way to get past that shame is to dive in and to face it,” she said.

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This pursuit often takes her to back roads and backyards that people don’t typically see. Her goal is to break through the facades people build around themselves and capture honest, human characters. “It’s just about slowing down and talking to people,” she said.

Her images capture a region that in some ways looks the same as it has for decades, but is finding its place in the 21st century. As cities like Nashville and Houston are booming with college graduates, Ms. Reynolds worries about “losing the Southernness of a place.” She says that if people don’t venture beyond cities like these they are getting an incomplete picture of the region. “It’s not a true cross-section of the rest of the state,” she said.

Nothing is off limits to her, though she does try to avoid beauty for beauty’s sake. She wants the focus to stay on confrontation and compassion for the people and their stories. “It’s not the ‘Gone With the Wind,’ romanticized version of the South,” she said.

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