One of the first and most endearing pieces in the series is a shot of The White Front Caf\u00e9 in Rosedale. Other works by photographer Debra Ferguson will be on display at Delta State University\u2019s Capps Archives and Museum Building as part of \u201cThe Vanishing Delta\u201d exhibit, set to open Sunday, March 26.
<\/P><\/TD><\/TR><\/TABLE><\/P> Photographer Debra L. Ferguson<\/SPAN> left the Mississippi Delta in the early 1970s but, as she puts it, \u201cThe Delta never left me.\u201d Fortunately, assignments and family kept taking her back to the region, and along the way she began capturing images of things and places that were fast disappearing. <\/SPAN><\/P>A retrospective of this work, \u201cThe Vanishing Delta,<\/SPAN><\/I><\/B>\u201d opens Sunday, March 26 in <\/SPAN>Delta State University\u2019s Charles W. Capps Archives and Museum, with an opening reception planned for 3 p.m. inside the Seminar Room. Ferguson will be in attendance to deliver a program detailing her art.
<\/P>A 1974 graduate of <\/SPAN>Delta State, Ferguson works as a magazine and advertising photographer, specializing in agricultural and rural lifestyle subjects. Her photography has appeared in Farm Journal, Progressive Farmer, Southern Living Travel <\/SPAN><\/B><\/SPAN><\/I>and other publications. A prolific stock photographer, her images are represented by agencies in California, England and France and have appeared in ads, text books and magazines in the Americas, Europe and Asia.<\/P>She admits to being \u201ca little obsessed about photographing certain Delta landmarks.\u201d When <\/SPAN>Ferguson drives past a familiar sight, like an old school or store, she often turns around and captures an image.<\/P>\u201cI learned the hard way to stop, no matter how tight my schedule was, and compose a photo that says something about the character of the place,\u201d she explains. \u201cThere were times when I didn\u2019t stop, then I came through the next time and discovered that the building was gone, utterly erased. At one time it had maybe been the center of a community that, itself, thrived for a time and then dwindled to nothing.\u201d<\/SPAN><\/P>Indirectly, <\/SPAN>Ferguson is describing Skene, the farming community just outside of Cleveland where she grew up. She remembers when several stores operated at or near the crossroads, and the surrounding countryside was home to scores of small farmers and the families that lived and worked in those fields. In her earliest recollections, two schools served that patch of Bolivar County, and several churches prospered in and near Skene.<\/P>Now, she says, very little of it remains. Except for a small cluster of homes and the <\/SPAN>Baptist Church, just about everything else has been torn down or reduced to an empty shell. Communities like that disappear a little at a time, she says, and people who are closest to the place don\u2019t see the decline as dramatically as someone like herself who comes and goes over the decades.
\u201cThe Delta partly mirrors what has happened across a wide part of rural <\/SPAN>America since World War II,\u201d Ferguson maintains. \u201cOver the years, I\u2019ve handled assignments in places as far apart as North Carolina and California, and nearly every time I go back to familiar communities, something is missing. Modern farming doesn\u2019t require as many people, so rural populations declined and their businesses and institutions slipped away a little at a time.\u201d<\/P>\u201cThe Vanishing Delta\u201d<\/SPAN> exhibit, underwritten by Cleveland State Bank, includes images representing a wide portion of the region, from Tunica in the north to Yazoo City in the south. As this body of work grew and Ferguson began producing fine art prints, she began calling it her Vanishing Delta series. A web site, www.vanishingdelta.com<\/A>, grew out of the work.
<\/P>Ferguson<\/SPAN> says she noticed lately that many of the images have something to do with food or eating. One of the first and most endearing pieces in the series is a shot of The White Front Caf\u00e9 in Rosedale. The cafe, which still survives, was founded by Joe Pope, a businessman who made his mark serving hot tamales to a mostly takeout clientele. As strange as it seems to outsiders, hot tamales are a Delta passion. They\u2019re served in some of the region\u2019s finest restaurants and in small eateries like the White Front.
Another spot in the series is Booga Bottom\u2019s, a country caf\u00e9 that flourished for a number of years, doing business in an old country store east of Duncan. Ferguson walked into Booga Bottom\u2019s one afternoon in the 1970s.
<\/P> \u201cIt looked like it had been there forever,\u201d she says. \u201cMeringue was piled high on the pies, and they were served at lunch by the women who made them. I had heard about the place for years and, even though it had a busy lunch hour, I wondered how much longer a spot so far out could survive. I went back to my car, loaded a couple of cameras with the last black-and-white film I had that day, then asked if it would be OK to take a few shots.\u201d
<\/SPAN><\/P>The images capture a quiet Delta afternoon in a place that soon faded away. A couple of years later, <\/SPAN>Ferguson drove back to Booga Bottom\u2019s and found it abandoned and empty.
<\/P>Ferguson<\/SPAN>\u2019s work also celebrates the ethnic history of the Delta. \u201cI never pass up a chance to photograph a small-town store that still bears the name of a Jewish, Chinese or Italian family that owned it,\u201d she says. \u201cThose signs say more about the history of a town than any historical marker. The Delta was one of the great meeting grounds in American history, and those stores and signs symbolize that fact.\u201d
<\/P>Ferguson<\/SPAN>, a current resident of Jackson, jokes that she learned photography \u201cby shooting a lot of bad pictures.\u201d Five years ago, she ventured into digital photography, and two years ago dropped film photography, altogether.
<\/P>Her digital work has been featured in the <\/SPAN>New York professional journal, Photo District News<\/SPAN><\/I>, as well as in PC Photo<\/SPAN><\/I>. The exhibit includes a mixture of film and digital photography. All images are printed on gicl\u00e9e fine art canvas, with reproduction by Digital Imaging Group of Flowood, Miss.
<\/P>Ferguson<\/SPAN> eschews the notion that she basically is photographing decay, something she often sees when photographers find their way to a place like the Delta \u201cand fixate on rusty, abandoned pickups and dilapidated shotgun shacks.\u201d
<\/P>\u201cIn many cases, I\u2019ve probably recorded the last image of a landmark that was once important to many people, and I try to bring forward something of its purpose and its quiet dignity,\u201d she says. \u201cThese places are worth remembering, and when they\u2019re gone, it\u2019s for eternity.\u201d
<\/SPAN><\/P>Free and open to the public, the exhibit is set to run through May 4. For more information on \u201cThe Vanishing Delta\u201d exhibit, please contact the Delta State Capps Archives and <\/SPAN>Museum Building at (662) 846-4780.
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