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.

Neshoba: The Price of Freedom

Opens today (8/13) @ Cinema Village:

Neshoba: The Price of Freedom tells the story of a Mississippi town still divided about the meaning of justice, 40 years after the murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, an event dramatized in the Oscar-winning film, Mississippi Burning. Although Klansmen bragged about what they did in 1964, no one was held accountable until 2005, when the State indicted preacher Edgar Ray Killen, an 80-year-old notorious racist and mastermind of the murders. Through exclusive interviews with Killen, intimate interviews with the victims’ families, and candid interviews with black and white Neshoba County citizens still struggling with their town’s violent past, the film explores whether the prosecution of one unrepentant Klansman constitutes justice and whether healing and reconciliation are possible without telling the unvarnished truth. (source)

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.

20x200 Love!

20x200 made this dreamy print available a week or so ago:

Midway, Neshoba County Fair, Philadelphia, Mississippi
by Mike Sinclair

ARTIST STATEMENT:

The Neshoba County Fair is different from the county fairs we have in the Midwest. It has most of the things you usually find: livestock judging, a beauty pageant, horse racing and a midway. The unusual thing is that it has over 600 one- and two-story cabins, called fairhouses, arranged into streets and neighborhoods on the fairgrounds. People own these cabins and live in them for the seven days of the fair. They are highly prized, handed down from one generation to the next. For the visitor, it gives the place a strange feeling: you are not sure if you're in a public or private space. When I was there I remember feeling like I’d come upon some extravagant neighborhood block party and it was obvious—at least to me—I was from another block.

The question of being on the inside or outside of a group is something I think most photographers think about. Do we photograph the familiar or the exotic, are we reporters or memoirists? If I went back there this July, twenty years later, what pictures would I take? (source)

CONGRATS!!

I'm excited to see 3 very cool southern (yep, i'm including TX in this one) projects selected for 2010 Black Rock Arts Foundation Grants!! (Full disclosure: I won a Black Rock Arts Grant in 2005 for my public art/restorative justice project, ArtCarTraz). Needless to say, BRAF funds some cool stuff and I'm happy they are here!

Community Art Makers

David Umlas, Marrilee Ratcliffe - Austin, TX

photo by Ira Weinschel

'Community Art Makers' are Austin, Texas based community leaders offering work and meeting space, guidance and assistance to artists endeavoring to engage our community. Former notable projects have inclulded recently showcasing the 32 foot tall fire tornado from the BRC 'Fire of Fires' Temple for a public audience of thousands, and the fist public burn night on NYE, 2009 of the Resolution Clock in the center of Austin, Texas for 100,000 people. Attached photo by Ira Weinschel.

BRAF's infrastructure investment will allow the Community Art Makers to build upon current resources and offer more structured, resources and work space for artists. Their upcoming projects are focused on artist empowerment and community building. Some of these projects for 2010 include partnerships with the City of Austin Library, Parks and Art in Public Places Departments, 'Art Outside' and 'First Night' pieces that showcase interactivity to a public audience and hands on classes and training for trained and aspiring artists.

The Music Box

The New Orleans Airlift, featuring Swoon - New Orleans, LA

The Music Box will be an interactive environment built from the remains of an 18th century derelict cottage in New Orleans. This imaginatively reconstructed, and ultimately livable “house”, will become a musical instrument to be played by visitors. Instrumentation will range from the rudimentary banging of wooden boards to more elaborate sounds mechanically triggered by opening doors or pulling levers. In addition to visitors, a range of local and national musicians, including a regional high school marching band, will be invited to play the house for the project’s Block Party series, which will be free and open to all.

The installation will visually resemble works Swoon is best known for – a series of intricate handmade boats that have floated the Mississippi, the Hudson river and most recently the Adriatic Sea and the canals of Venice, Italy during the 2009 Biennale. As with these floating crafts, the focus for The Music Box is on found materials, artistic and community collaboration, functional environments and interaction that involves sound and performance.

The New Orleans Airlift is a multi-disciplinary arts organization that produces and facilitates innovative artistic opportunities for New Orleans-based artists locally and around the globe. Bringing influential artists like Swoon from abroad to participate in cutting edge collaborations with local artists at home in our own community increases exposure, amplifies resources and aids the creative development of our city’s unique and irreplaceable creative community that still struggles for sustainability in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The Music Box is the first incarnation of what will become a permanent performance, exhibition and residency space for he New Orleans Airlift.

Reclaimed Art: Community Art from Recycled Materials

Wayne Andrews - Oxford, MS

The Yoknapatawpha Arts Council, working with students from the University of Mississippi Student Art Association and volunteers from the community, will host a series of community art days. The purpose of the community art days is to reclaim materials from a 1928 building, transform them into works of art, and utilize the work of art to create a focal point around the building the materials where removed which is be renovated into a community arts center.

“We are excited that we have been able to reach several community goals with this project”, shared Wayne Andrews, Director of the Arts Council. “ The project will provide a demonstration of how art can impact a community both by providing beauty and economic development. The art, artists and volunteers will transform an industrial building into a community center with the “undesirable & unwanted” elements repurposed into a piece of community art.”

STAGE: On The Levee

Set on a levee in Greenville, Mississippi, On the Levee is a play with music that revisits the flood of 1927, the worst in U.S. history. At the heart of the story are two fathers (a white cotton farmer and an African-American bootblack) and their sons. Based on a true story, On the Levee reaffirms the enduring spirit of hope in a time of great poverty and devastation. (source)

Now thru 7/10 @ The Duke on 42nd Street

EARTH DAY

SOUNDS: A.A. Bondy @ Bowery Ballroom 12/9

It's 12:52 in the morning and I'm at a hotel in Springfield, Ohio.

My new record is called When The Devil's Loose. To me it sounds like a radio washed ashore after a shipwreck. This whole thing started in upstate New York with snow on the ground. I got out of there, drove around the country for a bit and landed in Water Valley, Mississippi, where I kept working. The days grew longer and the snakes began to wake up. I ate catfish and walked around a lot. We got a lot of rain. The weeds grew at an alarming rate and we finished work one night under a red moon. My last record was called American Hearts. I know people that like it. Fat Possum Records put it out and is releasing When The Devils Loose. My brothers and my friends helped me record this new one. I'd like to thank them for that.

This hotel may have been nice once.
- A.A. Bondy When The Devil's Loose is released on September 1, 2009.

A.A. Bondy performs live tomorrow (12/9) night at Bowery Ballroom with The Duke and the King, and Willy Mason. (source)

GIFT IDEA: 20x200 Limited Edition Art Prints

ART FOR EVERYONE! Launched in September 2007, 20x200 uses the power of the Internet to bring the value and joy of collecting art to a wider audience than has ever been possible. Named for its signature $20 prints, which are released in editions of 200, the site offers photographs and works on paper in a variety of sizes, ranging in price from $20 to $5000. Curated and personally introduced by founder Jen Bekman in twice weekly newsletters, 20x200's exhibition-quality prints are delivered with artist-signed certificates of authenticity. Collectors clamor for original works from our artists and our editions frequently sell out. They are passionate about art and the Internet at 20x200 and they are excited about creating a place where any art lover can be an art collector.

The prints below were created in the South. You can view the work of artists from the South here.

think-make-think (second edition) by Clifton Burt

Hank Williams' Bed, Georgiana, Alabama by Scott Eiden

Penguin, Memphis, TN by Geoffrey Ellis

Hint: That "Penguin" is my fave!