Atop a roughly 300-million-year-old granite monolith just outside Atlanta, people gather each day under an open sky. Some come to move. Some to pray. Some to rest, reflect, or celebrate.
In Rise Above: On Top of Stone Mountain, award-winning documentary photographer Jean Shifrin captures this shared human experience—revealing, frame by frame, a place quietly transformed by presence and peace.
Over the course of a decade, Shifrin climbed to the summit of Stone Mountain with nothing more than her iPhone and an artist’s eye. What she witnessed and now shares through more than 80 full-color images is an ode to modern America. Children in Halloween costumes. A Buddhist monk in a saffron robe. Veterans carrying flags. Couples embracing the view. Families gathered in memory or joy.
Rise Above offers a powerful visual reimagining of one of the South’s most controversial landmarks. Known for its massive Confederate carving and long association with racial division, Stone Mountain becomes, through Shifrin’s lens, a reclaimed space—vibrant, diverse, and deeply human.
Designed by Laurie Shock with elegant sequencing that allows the photographs to “speak” to one another across the page, the book features an introduction by photographer and writer Billy Howard, who calls the work “a solace of hope for humanity.”

About the Author:

Jean Shifrin is an award-winning documentary photographer and former staff photojournalist for The Kansas City Star and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Her work has earned numerous accolades, including a Nikon Documentary Sabbatical Grant and an Overseas Press Award. She lives in Atlanta with her partner and continues to explore themes of identity, place, and belonging through her photography.