I photograph in communities that span roughly 40 square miles of the northern Mississippi Delta. Villages with names like Alligator, BoBo, and Duncan, as well as the country’s oldest completely African American municipality, Mound Bayou, where in 1910, a New York Times headline once declared, “no white man can own a square foot of property.”
While this work makes specific reference to the rural black experience, I am reminded with every visit that these themes of faith, identity, and perseverance are common to us all. For these are the traits of strong men.