ALABAMA BOUND!!!!!!!!!!!!

A very exciting event happened to me right before the holidays!  I have been working on securing funding for a project I have labeled 21st Century America. My idea was to follow in the footsteps of Dorotha Lange and other WPA photographers and record America - state by state - on high resolution digital cameras during the early 21st Century and donate the images to the Library of Congress. The project has been funded for the state of Alabama and will begin at the Mobile, Alabama Mardi Gras (the very first Mardi Gras in America!) celebration in early February 2010! I am extremely excited. Once I am down in Alabama, I will be uploading weekly blogs and You Tube videos because I will have so much to show off. I owe a big Thank You to Sharon Tyson, the Executive Director of the 21st Century America Foundation, Inc. located in Alabama. Her efforts in fund raising have paid off and now we can show the rest of the world how diverse and incredible the state of Alabama is.

This is an amazing state. Known as the "Heart of Dixie", Alabama has more than 4.5 million residents. The state has heavily invested in aerospace, education, health care, banking and various heavy industries including automobile manufacturing, mineral extraction, steel production and fabrication.

The capital of Alabama is Montgomery, and the largest city by population is Birmingham. The largest city by total land area is Huntsville and the oldest city is Mobile.

Since photography is the way I communicate and I have not started in Alabama yet, I thought I would show you what the Library of Congress has in its archives now. I will be adding at least 4,000 digital files and several You Tube videos to this archive.

                


Bienville Park 1906 - Mobile

 

             Cussedy Hall Park, Tuskegee - 1907

Skyline Farms - 1937

                                 Montgomery 1929

Birmingham 1910

Gee's Bend 1939

Many of these images were taken by famous photographers.  Walker Evans took this one of a Coca-cola shack somewhere in Alabama:

So I am getting organized, cleaning my cameras and preparing for my Alabama journey that will begin
in February 2010.  I will work every day for three or four months, then come back again in the fall.
All the Convention and Visitors Bureaus and the Chambers of Commerce are going to give me lists miles long to I can capture all that Alabama has to give.  I can't wait to tell you all about it and I trust you
will join me for this wild and interesting ride through "The Heart of Dixie".