Photographer Searches For Remnants of the Mississippi Blues

The project catalogued is the product of two intentions: a love for Mississippi Delta Blues and a yearning to understand the culture that made it. Ari Gabel set forth in search for those whose hands were still shaking from carrying a torch: men and women, singers and songwriters, and the land that could, just maybe, still cultivate the music that changed so many people’s lives. In a contemporary world where thousands of histories and cultures are able to exist and overlap, the fate of Delta Blues was an unanswered question – a music forged by a situation that we assume society has overcome, but perhaps has only compounded by casting another blind eye in their direction. What he found there initiated a different dialogue entirely. — George Carr

Born and raised in the midwest, photographer Ari Gabel journeyed to the great American south in search of the people and places that gave birth to the Delta Blues. Gabel’s images are full of grit and abandon, both places loved and places lost. Here is a country where passion and sorrow meet in a bittersweet melody, and a people unable and undesiring of pretense or show. Tired of Being Tired is an intimate and honest portrayal of a culture whose roots in music and memory run deep, the faint traces of a song always drifting away on the horizon.

This post was contributed by photographer and Feature Shoot Editorial Assistant Jenna Garrett.

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