Tim Duffy: Music Makers Tintypes
October 29, 2026
FRANK GALLERY, Carrboro

Self Portrait: Tim Duffy

Timothy Duffy is a renowned photographer and founder of the Music Maker Relief Foundation. Timothy has been recording and photographing traditional artists in the South since the age of 16, when he became interested in ethnomusicology. After earning a BA from Friends World College and MA from the Curriculum in Folklore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Timothy and his wife Denise founded Music Maker Relief Foundation in 1994 to assist traditional musicians in need.

As a photographer he edited and took many photographs for Portraits and Songs from the Roots of America, and was the sole photographer for the nationally touring exhibitions: We Are the Music Makers! & Our Living Past. Both exhibits received support from the National Endowment for the Arts. Timothy Duffy’s photographs were published by 21st Editions in a monograph entitled BLUE in 2017 — followed by a monograph published by UNC Press in association with the New Orleans Museum of Art entitled Blue Muse: Timothy Duffy’s Southern Photographs in 2019. Works from Blue Muse premiered in a solo exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of Art in April 2019. His current project is Hanging Tree Guitars, a collaboration with sculptor and spiritual philosopher Freeman Vines, containing Timothy’s photography coupled with Vine’s philosophy.

Photograph: Tim Duffy

Franklin Street Arts Collective is an art gallery, art collective, and non-profit organization located in Carrboro, North Carolina. Franklin Street Arts Collective is commonly called FRANK.

Event funded from a grant from UBS Financial