MISSISSIPPI
The sun radiates and creates an energy in the Mississippi Delta like no other place. This is due to the water table being approximately ten feet below the large flat plain that is Coahoma County. This is an area that has consistently flooded over and over again for several thousand years, making it one of the most fertile regions of the world. The fertility, the heat, the humidity make this land want to be something it currently is not. You can see it in the way the Kudzu, like chainmail, drapes itself over old trees, and how the farmers now arm themselves with earth-altering, agricultural weaponry.
There are worlds within worlds in Coahoma County, Mississippi. It is a place with a strong oral tradition where the locals have a deep historical and cultural knowledge of the region. It is the birthplace of the Delta Blues. It is a landscape enlivened by a photographic collective memory, fed by nearly two centuries of photographers working their magic and being changed by the magic of the land in return. - John Chiara