Southern gothic aesthetic black people

For many black Americans, the South holds a bittersweet place in our heart; as much home as sorrow, as much ghostly as ancestral. Detangling our history is harder than detangling our hair — the webs of our lineage weave back and forth through time and space. Despite all the South has put my people through, it calls to me.

Photographer Bill Steber has worked in Mississippi for 20 years documenting Blues in the Delta and Hill Country including juke joints, Jr. Kimbrough and other bluesmen, cotton farming, lake baptisms and hoodoo traditions. His latest passion is exploring the 21st century with 19th century wet plate collodion photography.

Learning about hidden times and peoples is one of the great pleasures of studying history. The Gullah community of African-Americans who live in parts of Georgia and South Carolina lived in relativ…

Romantic wedding photo

Asheville NC, late 1950s