November 2012
New Delta Rising
Edited and photographed by Magdalena Sole’
Introduction by Rick Bragg
Narratives by Tom Lassiter
University Press of Mississippi
Cloth, $38.00
A compelling look at the people and places of today’s Mississippi Delta
Called “the most southern place on earth,” the Mississippi Delta annually attracts thousands of tourists, photographers, and writers to visit this haunting region of open fields, ramshackle houses, and blues music. Their experiences–and those of local documentary artists as well–have led to many articles and books about the Delta. None before, however, has focused so intently upon the people themselves.
Award-winning photographer Magdalena Solé, known for her sensitive expressions of culture through distinctive color artistry, spent a year interviewing and photographing hundreds of Delta people. She immediately felt a connection to the Delta people, and her honest and heartfelt images in New Delta Risingcapture the warmth and sense of community she experienced. The accompanying narratives by Tom Lassiter further illuminate the moral strength of the people and the spirit they give to the place.
The result is New Delta Rising, a book containing nearly one hundred stunning color photographs and compelling stories about the Delta people and their families. It is a book, Rick Bragg writes in the introduction, where “myth and magic and legend swirl into the real world, and it can be hard to tell where one stops and the other begins.”
New Delta Rising is a publication of The Dreyfus Health Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that helps individuals and communities in the Mississippi Delta and throughout the world.
Magdalena Solé, New York, New York, is a social documentary photographer. She holds a master’s of fine art in film from Columbia University. Tom Lassiter, Greensboro, North Carolina, is a writer and editor. Rick Bragg, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, is a Pulizer Prize-winning writer and critically acclaimed author of several best-selling nonfiction books.
