Opening today: a striking new exhibit of photographs taken by GQ design director Fred Woodward. Printed in high-contrast black-and-white, the pictures were originally snapped in 1986 to accompany an article written by Nicholas Lemann for The Atlantic Monthly. The concept was to document how the flight of middle-class African-Americans to Chicago from small towns in the South had created, as The Atlantic put it, a "disastrously isolated underclass." In reporting the story, Lemann was intrigued to discover that many of the subjects he'd interviewed had come from Canton, Mississippi. Woodward took his camera there, too.

The magazine only printed a small selection—at the time, The Atlantic didn't publish photos, but made an exception here—and the photographer shelved his negatives in the interim. Now, as they're presented at Manhattan's 401 Projects, the results are arresting. "Whether he was actually packing heat or not, I don't know," Woodward says, referring to the hard case in Revolver (pictured). "I think he was pulling my leg. It's just a pose. I looked at the frames on either side, and there was some laughter leading up to that moment." Other memorable pictures include those taken at a barber shop in Canton and the series Woodward took at the Greater Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church in Chicago. It was the latter batch, in fact, that gave the photographer his impetus for the show: "I'd heard discussion on the radio—it was probably NPR—about Barack Obama and the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Someone commented that maybe the problem was that many Americans had never been inside an African-American church, and it brought me back to that day in Chicago." Check out a selection of Woodward's photos in our slideshow.
"Going Over Home," May 14 to July 13, 401 Projects, 401 West St., New York, NY, (212) 633-6202, 401projects.com