MISSISSIPI DELTA – THE LAND WHERE THE BLUES BEGAN
2013This visual essay was commissioned by Forage Press.
I was inspired by the work of Alan Lomax, who dedicated his life to producing thousands of field recordings capturing traditional songs from around the world. His recordings from around the Mississippi Delta are particularly well known, and he is credited with discovering the voice of Vera Hall among many other big names in the early Blues scene.
The result of my research is a visual essay which examines the daily lives of the ancestors of the people Lomax was recording in the 1940’s and 50’s. My images are based on archive photographs that document the lives of slaves and labourers from the American South.
German-English Illustrator, based in Brighton, UK
I am an illustrator and educator, with a
particular focus on sequential narrative and drawing.
Much of my work focuses on exploring how illustration can be used as an active tool for understanding, interpreting and re-evaluating dominant narratives and discourse about historical events, asking: How can illustration add to our understanding of history, how can it challenge it?
I am interested in exploring and highlighting the ways in which history is recorded, suppressed, remembered and distorted. I have become particularly interested in how meaning and underlying power structures contained within archival records can be interpreted through the act of drawing.
More recent projects and research have become focused on the use of auto-ethnographic practices within comic making, the use of digital stimuli within illustration, and expanded definitions of illustration practice.
Much of my work focuses on exploring how illustration can be used as an active tool for understanding, interpreting and re-evaluating dominant narratives and discourse about historical events, asking: How can illustration add to our understanding of history, how can it challenge it?
I am interested in exploring and highlighting the ways in which history is recorded, suppressed, remembered and distorted. I have become particularly interested in how meaning and underlying power structures contained within archival records can be interpreted through the act of drawing.
More recent projects and research have become focused on the use of auto-ethnographic practices within comic making, the use of digital stimuli within illustration, and expanded definitions of illustration practice.