The world grows darker; for now we approach the Black Belt, that strange land of shadows

W.E.B. DUBOIS

The past 8 years I have been making photographs in a community in Alabama. The area skirts along the southern edge of the black belt region and has a long history of violence and marginalization of the black community. Most of these people are descended from several large cotton plantations in Henry and Barbour counties that held over ten thousand slaves on the eve of the civil war. Traditional interpretations of this region focus on the past civil rights movment and ignore continued segregation and the role of physical form in reinforcing racism. I do not seek to illustrate racism nor its injustice but have been interested in understanding the stories of those lived and a historical pattern of marginalization. My hope is this develops a new understanding of how a physical pattern of segregated communities poison a larger atmosphere of culture and revealed in individuals portrayed.