New Delta Rising

 In her photo book New Delta Rising photographer Magdalena Sole shares the stories of the people of the Mississippi Delta. So much about the Delta has focused on the land, the myth of place and its sordid past. New Delta Rising goes to the heart of what is happening now. The stories are rich and diverse and the photos are stunning.

A Q&A with photographer Magdalena Sole.

I understand that you went to the Delta and, like so many others, it grabbed ahold of you. There are a lot of books about the Delta including an abundance of photo books – so how did this particular book come about?

The Delta did grab ahold of me. I was invited by the Dreyfus Health Foundation to attend a rally in Cleveland, and so I went. What I found was an amazing culture. Delta people allowed me to slip into their midst as if they had known me forever; we could swap stories and laughter, sorrow and silence. In the most unexpected places I found kinship. Sometimes as a photographer you are lucky and make a friend here or there, but most often you arrive as an outsider, and that is how you leave. The Delta refused to go along. I arrived as an outsider, but I was gradually absorbed into the fabric of life so I felt not like an outsider, but rather like a family member who happened to have the camera

There are many books about the Delta, but I did not see one that specifically focused on the people. What I most loved about the Delta were the people. Not the famous ones, but the everyday person who struggles and has hardships, and finds ways to overcome them.

Being that there was a 3^rd party – the Rogosin Institute – involved, did that color your project in ways? Was there an agenda at the outset that they hoped you’d support?

The Dreyfus Health Foundation, which is a subsidiary of The Rogosin Institute, had done much grassroots work in the Mississippi Delta. We shared a common love for the people of the Delta. We wanted to create a book that expressed the beauty and strength of the people. They gave me great creative freedom to make a book that did the beauty of the Delta justice.

What is their interest in having you document the people on the Delta on their behalf?

The foundation views the Delta as a place of strength and immense human potential. They wanted this strength and potential documented.

How did you decide who would make it into the book?

It evolved organically, I wanted people who usually are not given a voice but have a voice, to be heard.

Did you go in with any preconceived notions and the seek out images that would support that hypothesis?

I was born in Europe and came to this country when I was in my 20’s. I was ignorant of the South and so had not one preconceived notion about the Delta. With purpose I did not want to do much research before starting the project. I love the feeling of arriving in an unknown place for the first time. The first impressions and explorations let me see the beauty of a place no matter how forlorn. I just look, to hopefully see behind the surface.

How much research did you do before going down? Did you see “Lalee’s Kin” or the Morgan Freeman documentary about the white/black prom, “Prom Night In Mississippi?” Did you read “The Most Southern Place on Earth? Or maybe just see films like ‘Mississippi Burning?”

I didn’t see any films, or read any books about the Delta until I was almost finished project. I didn’t want my pictures to be tainted by anyone else’s interpretations of the Delta. I learned about the Delta by listening to the stories of the people I met. I think I am a good listener, which helps.

The overarching stereotype or reality is that the Delta is very poor and that’s all it’s ever going to be. Did you find that there? Was there another narrative to explore?

Yes, most know that the Delta is one of the poorest places in the United States with the saddest infant mortality rate, and rampant unemployment. But behind the statistics I found a vibrant, resilient community with a strong family cohesiveness at its core.  The texture of the Delta is unique. What interested me more then the fact that people in the Delta have less money, was the beauty, dignity, and the richness of their lives.

What did you leave out?

I left out dozens of worthy stories and images that could have filled another book. Space was my worst enemy.

Being from NYC, we have a sense of entitled and a belief that we can do whatever we want. And for the most part we sort of can. For the very poor of the Delta – what is the hope? What’s the most/best they can expect?

A certain class of New Yorker is entitled and can do most of what they want.  Then again, for  other classes in the city choices and hope remain much more limited. In both places the hope is for education and a decent job. I am not really from New York City, I was born in Spain, then moved to Switzerland in the 1960s as a daughter of immigrants.  I am no foreigner to hardship and in fact feel most at home among people with that experience.

If you could do this project again, what would you have done differently?

That’s such a difficult question, since I now know so much more about the area and its people then when I started. But in truth I think I would do it all the same. I would still want to be a blank slate and without guile. I would still want the surprise of first discovery at the core of my work. But most of all I would want to again be mesmerized by the kindness and generosity of the people I found.

Is there a Part Two expected in the future?

 One never knows.

What types of promotion did you do when the book was released? Did you exhibit in MS and NY?

The first promotion I did with the book was both a series of book signing events and talks throughout the bookstores of Mississippi. I was also invited to show the pictures in the Clarksdale Courthouse, in an exhibit titled “Southern Expressions”. It was a great for the people that were depicted in the book to come to the courthouse, take center stage and participate in the joy of the coming out of the book. I will never forget everyone's  smiling faces and pride when they saw themselves in the book. It made all the hard work worthwhile.

My next exhibit in the Delta was in Cleveland, MS. The opening was on August 23rd at The Gallery at Wiljax at 347 Cotton Row, a preserved old part of town. The pictures will also be on display at Sous Les Étoiles Gallery in Soho, NY on September 27, and in January 2013 at the Leica Gallery in New York City.

What does it mean for the people of the Delta to be in a book?

I can’t speak for the people of the Delta but what I hope is that opening this book brings a smile of recognition at lives well lived, or redeemed through courage and hard work.

Did you have hopes for this book/project  - that perhaps it would serve as a catalyst for change and awareness?

Perhaps the stories and pictures will provide some heart and courage and that would be wonderful.

Do people in NY and other parts of the country still have the wrong idea about Mississippi. What do we think and then what would be the truth that you’d like people to know?

People are really surprised when they see the book. No one seemed to know that the Mississippi portrayed in the pictures even existed. May people have expressed that they want to visit the Delta, bacause they like what thet saw.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Just a heartfelt thanks to the people I met in the Delta for their kindness, hospitality and willingness to take me into their lives.  I hope my book is some evidence of my deep gratitude.

 Sous Les Etoiles gallery will exhibit Sole's Delta photos from Sept 27 thru Nov 10. 

Also, you can join Sole for a photo workshop in the Delta from Oct 10 - 24.

Rat, The River, and Bessie Smith

I went to the Mississippi Delta once with my cousin Jessica. We drove from St. Louis to New Orleans on the Great River Road. In Clarksdale we went to visit with Rat who runs the Riverside Hotel - the place where Bessie Smith is rumored to have died after a car crash and being denied access to a white hospital for treatment. This story has been a matter of dispute, but when we were there in 2001 Rat still had the room done up as a tribute to Bessie. I don't know if Rat is still around but he told us: "If you want to find Rat, he's down by the river." That's where I'd start.

The Devil's Music: The Life and Blues of Bessie Smith is playing now at St. Luke's Theater. Click here for tickets.

Booker's Place

I've been in conversation for the past few weeks with a friend who grew up in the Mississippi Delta about the fallout from everything that occurred there during the 60s and 70s and where the Delta is now. I don't know that there will ever come a day when race is not a hot button topic in America. It's either the pink elephant in the room or a snarling divisive pit bull. We don't often get a chance to engage in productive conversation about what happened then, what's happening now and how to move forward together.

With his film, Booker's Place, Raymond DeFelitta gives us that chance.

On the Tribeca Film site, William Goldberg writes: "In 1965, documentary filmmaker Frank DeFelitta traveled to Mississippi to shoot a film on the subject of racism in the American South. As he went about observing life in Mississippi and interviewing the locals, Frank was introduced to an African-American waiter named Booker Wright. With utter candor and a brazen lack of concern for his own well-being, Booker appeared on tape in the documentary and spoke openly and honestly about the realities of living in a racist society. This brief interview forever changed the lives of Booker and his family, and more than 40 years later, Frank's son Raymond DeFelitta (director of City Island) returns to the site of his father's film to examine the repercussions of this fateful interview." (source)

Mr. DeFelitta answered some poignant questions for Southernist about his trip to Mississippi, what he found there, and the experience of making this film:

Is your father’s original piece still viewable anywhere?

Not at the moment. I took it off Youtube when we started negotiating with NBC for the footage to be used in Booker's Place. Hopefully we'll be able to include it as a DVD extra.

 Was this your first experience with Mississippi?

Yes, I'd never been in anywhere in the south except Florida...and that was Miami!

 What preconceived notions did you go to Mississippi with? Did any of that change as you worked on this project?

I had no preconceived notions about the people. My sense was that it was a different place from the place that my father had visited fifty years ago and that was correct, to a large extent. What I wasn't prepared for was the level of poverty. You hear about these things as statistics but until you see it up close, you don't realize that that "other America" truly does exist and it's appalling. Gives a special jolt to the whole "one-percent" bullshit and the money being spent to elect Presidents who can do nothing about the poverty I'm talking about.

It is not often that people get a chance to go back and talk about certain things that happened during that time in Mississippi. How much resistance were you met with when you first got there and how did you overcome that and get folks talking?

The people in Mississippi--at least the ones I talked with--are eloquent and interested in their own history. They've thought a lot about these issues, about their dark past and want to explore the truth of it with others since they feel (rightly) that they've been stereotyped over the years

as a land filled with Klan members and nothing else. The only thing they ever made clear that would make them uncomfortable would be if they sensed we were there to patronize them i.e. portray them as "hicks" and in some way demean them. 

What would have happened to/with this film if you had not been able to get folks to talk to you? Could you have still made this film – would the story have been worth telling – if you didn’t get the interviews you got (e.g. the judge)?

No, there's no historical retrospective possible, to my mind, without witnesses and direct testimony. It's what separates a true narrative documentary from, say, a History Channel documentary. Not that I'm knocking what HC docs, but they are a different breed than what I do and am interested in.

It seems that your dad may have suspected that something bad happened to Booker. Was he surprised to learn of his demise?

Yes as was I.

That last sound bite on the trailer is a bit gut-wrenching. Does your father truly regret leaving Booker in? Would he have done Booker a disservice if he had left him out, even if it meant sparing his life?

I think he has mixed feelings, true ambivalence (which defined is: strong feelings in either direction). Ultimately I think he realizes that censoring Booker "for his own good" would have been just as patronizing an act as any white person had committed on Booker through his life.

What do you expect that New York audiences will think of or get from this film?

I don't think of NY audiences as a separate group than other audiences really. I hope any audience gets a chance to see the tragedy of the Civil Rights struggle through a fresh lens--that of one man, and not one of the heroes (King, Evers) but a simple working man. Personalizing the story will, I hope, give people a more nuanced perspective on the subject and how many-sided the story of the struggle was.

Is this just another sad Mississippi story? Why is this story important?

Because it's the story of a great movement but seen from the point of view of one man's life and his reactions to his everyday treatment, his life's history and how he finally broke down and spoke out.

In what ways did it seem that the fallout from the 60s was still affecting the lives of Mississippians today?

In the south it seems like every conversation eventually circles back to the subject of race. It's their original sin and they can't get away from the subject. So yes, in terms of dealing with the past and trying to move forward into the future--and making filmmakers and journalists and

other interested parties understand the complexity of their history--there is still much fallout.

Is there another narrative about Mississippi that will begin to be told one day?

Progress is slow but it's undeniable. The town of Greenwood, Miss. was a terrorist state for black people back when my father made his film. And the schools were segregated. Neither of those things are true anymore--something that none of the white community’s leaders who my father shows in his film would have ever thought possible. So even though much remains to be done, those are two major changes. I think life in the south is like life for all of us. There's an inextricable pull to events. We can't go backward so we must go forward.

Booker's Place is now available on-demand and is playing at Noho 7 in Los Angeles, CA and opens at Quad Cinema in New York, NY tomorrow.

Please also visit the blog of Booker's granddaughter Yvette for additional riveting commentary and thought provoking conversation.

Bessie on the Hudson...

Thanks to Film Forum, you can catch the only big screen appearance of blues legend Bessie Smith tomorrow night (8/10) .

This conjures my own memory of Bessie...and the photo I took, during a road trip thru the MS Delta in 2001, of the room where she died.

BOOK: Delta Blues by Ted Gioia

I was skeptical about there being anything left to say about the Blues but Ted Gioia's new book, Delta Blues, has gotten rave reviews from everyone from the New York Times to Kirkus Reviews (following below):

The back roads of the blues are traveled anew in a biography-driven history. Writer-musician Gioia (Healing Songs, 2006, etc.) undertakes the daunting task of reconsidering the blues of the Mississippi Delta, musicological terrain well-plowed in several noteworthy books, most prominently the late Robert Palmer's seminal Deep Blues (1981). Gioia is up to the job. After some wide-lens discussion of the music's African origins, W.C. Handy's popularization of the form in the early 20th century and the early female "classic blues" singers, he plunges into chapters largely focused on the Delta style's key recording artists. Equal weight is given to originators of the '20s and '30s (Charley Patton, Son House, Skip James, the inevitable Robert Johnson) and postwar exponents (Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Howlin' Wolf, B.B. King). A final chapter summarizes the entry of the Delta's music into the cultural mainstream via the blues revival of the '50s and '60s and recent developments, wrapping things up tidily. With the exception of House, all Gioia's subjects have been covered in at least one full-length biography, but his prose moves with enough velocity and packs enough insight to keep even jaded readers interested. He roams easily into sidebar discussions about topics as diverse as the role of Mississippi retailer and talent scout H.C. Spier in the spread of the Delta sound; the tenuous economics of the "race records" business, which screeched to a halt during the Depression years; and the careers of such chimerical performers as Kid Bailey and Geechie Wiley, one of the very few women to play in the Delta style. Gioia has absorbed all the previous research and organizes it with verve and economy, and he's not afraid of being argumentative when it's warranted. He has also undertaken fresh interviews with many of the obsessive scholars, including Gayle Dean Wardlow, Mack McCormick and Stephen Calt, whose fieldwork first unearthed the elusive history of the Delta's bluesmen.Comprehensive and smart - a solid text for blues aficionados. (Kirkus Reviews)

SCREEN: BALLAST OPENS TODAY @ FILM FORUM NYC

In the cold, winter light of a rural Mississippi Delta township, a man’s suicide radically transforms three characters’ lives and throws off-balance what has long been a static arrangement among them. Marlee is a single mother struggling to scratch a living for herself and James, her 12-year-old son, who has begun to stumble under drug and violence pressures. So when the opportunity to seek safe harbor at a new home arises, she grabs it, though the property is shared by Lawrence, a man with whom Marlee has feuded bitterly since James’s birth. With circumstances thrusting them into proximity, a subtle interdependence and common purpose emerge for Marlee and Lawrence as they navigate grief, test new waters, and tentatively move forward. (read more)

SCREEN: WHAT WE GOT HERE IS A FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE

I never intended to come home with a convict. I was just going on a drive. A drive down the Great River Road from St. Louis to New Orleans. But I got caught up…

Caught up in the dank mysterious intoxication of the Delta where the blues will lead you unplugged to the banks of the Mississippi River, past catfish farms, high atop a levee, down abandoned rail road tracks where the Southern used to cross the Dawg, to the Crossroads where desperate men sell their souls to the devil at midnight, and right to the front porch of a steadfast but weathered shotgun shack where you will awake to a fuchsia sun peeking up behind a long, lonely stretch of cotton field. And, ultimately, the blues will lead you to Mississippi State Penitentiary, a storied rite of passage for most blues man, mired in the reality of plantation style rehabilitation. Any final resistance to this seduction will fall away as you drive thru MSP with Bukka White’s “Parchman Farm Blues” moaning and droning from your rental car speakers. Gotcha!

* * * * *

When your hotel posts a sign in your room telling you that the water is brown because the river runs underground straight through town, but it’s perfectly safe to drink and bathe in, you have two choices: stay dirty...or get muddy.

The sun is beginning to make its way down towards the horizon as we roll into Greenville, MS and the sky has exploded into a wondrous spray of feathery wisps of clouds and sun spotted rainbows. Greenville is heralded as the heart of the Delta and the region’s biggest city. It has had a history of being a “progressive” town with an overabundance of writers. Today it seems to have an overabundance of strip malls.

Mississippi is all hustle and no bustle: from the lure of instant riches up in Tunica, to the promise of a certain future offered by Sister Marie’s psychic advisement on the outskirts of Greenville. The town’s treasures are scattered. From the meditative tranquility of a weeping willow tree shading the banks of a placid stream at the historic Winterville Mounds, to the barren grittiness of Nelson Street where you can scarf tamales at Doe’s Eat Place and get your juke on at the Flowing Fountain.

And then there’s the intersection of Highways 82 and 1. The intersection buzzes with the accessibility of instantly gratified needs, from the steady stream at the mini-mart on the northwest corner, to the fast-food commodified tentacles stretching to the South and East. By stark contrast, the shell of an abandoned gas station sits in beaten decay under the Mississippi sun across the street. This is the forgotten corner. The one everybody hurries past en route to somewhere else. Across the street they offer “Quick Cash” and “Pay Day Loans.” Over here, you got nothing coming.

* * * * *

“Look! Convicts!!” I exclaim as we approach “nothing coming” corner. Four white men in green and white striped pants with “MDOC CONVICT” stenciled in black across their white short-sleeve button down shirts mill about the empty lot while their overseer, a portly, dark-skinned black man wearing khaki pants, a long-sleeved, button-down chambray shirt, suspenders, a suede cowboy hat, stereotypical mirrored aviator boss man sunglasses and a 1/4 inch thick, gleaming gold herringbone chain, watches them as his left jaw juts out under the weight of a large wad of chewing tobacco.

We stop and we make friends.

* * * * *

The thought of becoming a prison pen pal can be a little scary. Your biggest fear (aside from realizing, as most people do, that you have fallen in love with your convict!) is that they will get released and find you one day. That you will be stalked and subsequently chopped up into little pieces and tossed into the East River. And after a year of finding random body parts washed up on the banks of the FDR Drive and Roosevelt Island, the NYPD will piece the body together and finally ID it as...YOU. So, I take some precautions:

1. Unlist my phone number
2. Rent a PO Box
3. Make sure my dental records are up to date
4. Get a con-ed (convict education)

I read books: You Are Going To Prison, Cell 2455 Death Row, The Prisoner’s Wife, New Jack, You Got Nothing Coming, In The Belly Of The Beast, How To Survive Federal Prison Camp, Hillary Clinton’s Pen Pal, The Prisons, The Serial Killer Letters, Games Criminals Play: And How You Can Profit By Knowing Them.

And I watch movies: Life, O Brother Where Art Thou, Auggie Rose, and, of course, the mother of them all, Cool Hand Luke. (end…for now)

RIP Paul Newman. Cool Hand Luke, the deluxe edition on Blue Ray and DVD, is out now on Warner Home Video.