Mississipi Delta

“Mississippi Delta” is an exploration of communities in the South. The Delta is an iconic region lying between the Mississippi and Yazoo Rivers, running from Memphis, TN to Vicksburg, MS, a place that evokes visions of sharecroppers, plantations and, of course, the sound of the Blues.

A small wealthy gentry and a large impoverished underclass lives in dilapidated houses and tilting
trailers, its community is very conscious of its own identity and its racial diversity.

Magdalena Sole is a social documentary photographer in quest of simple everyday beauty. She deeply admires people’s resilience and resourcefulness in the face of adversity. Their vulnerability becomes their strength. In this series she tells the story of people who make do with little. She shows their living conditions with dignity, even though a sense of lethargy prevails, a quietness and silence that characterizes the South is palatable. It is a place were changes do not happen fast. Death seems to be the only inevitable that rips change into people’s lives. In spite of hardship, there is a resigned acceptance of ones lot in life. Teenagers, mostly unemployed, still show apprehension, anger and fear. They do want change, but nobody want’s to risk loosing what little they have, and shake the delicate balance that holds everything together.

“My work is about communities at the edge of society; my photographs describe brief moments of human existence, carried by the rhythm of a setting. They convey what is at once simple and vast, passing and constant, ordinary and intangible,” said Magdalena Sole. “What inspires my pictures is light and the hidden spaces it illuminates, especially in immigrant and working class communities. Places where beauty is found in displaced spirits and peeling paint.”

The Delta images have been created for a book titled “New Delta Rising,” distributed by the University Press of Mississippi. It has won the Silver Award in 2011 at PX3 Prix de la Photographie in France.

Most recently her photographs of the Mississippi Delta have been selected as a PDN Photo Annual 2011 Finalist. Magdalena Sole is also winner of the Silver Prize 2011 at Slow Exposures, Concord, GA.