Blue Alabama by Andrew Moore
On October 6, 2019 at 2pm
the Marengo County Historical Society will be featuring the new works of renowned photographer Andrew Moore, "Blue Alabama". Andrew will be discussing his new book and signing copies. In his latest project, he focuses on Alabama―a region with a complex relationship to the past. Spending four years in lower Alabama, Moore searched for what he called “that ‘deep history’ which resides in the humblest of settings.” And Alabama’s Black Belt―named for its fertile soil and deeply associated with the region’s African American culture―has that history.
Andrew Moore
is a contemporary American photographer known for his large-format color images of derelict structures in Detroit, Cuba, and Russia. “I have to admit that one of the aspects of being a photographer I enjoy most is the opportunity to play both detective and spy,” he has explained. Born Andrew Lambdin Moore on March 26, 1957 in Old Greenwich, CT, Moore’s parents nurtured his interest in photography from the time he was a child. He went on to study at Princeton University. After finishing school in 1979, Moore moved to New Orleans, where he focused his camera on the disappearing industries of the city, such as broom factories and coffin carpentry shops. Returning to New York in 1981, the artist made a series of photographs capturing areas of the city undergoing demolition and urban development. Occasionally making forays into directing, he went on to produce the acclaimed film How to Draw Bunny: Moore currently lives and works in New York, NY. Today, the artist’s photographs are held in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, among others.
Moore’s photographs of the Black Belt
honor its complicated histories but depart from them, avoiding stereotypes and finding the hope, resilience and creativity that animate this place. With the photographer acting “as a listener at history’s doorstep,” Blue Alabama offers a tender, surprising portrait of the South―a region marked by economic, social and cultural divisions, but also a love of history, tradition and land. The book includes a previously unpublished story by award-winning American novelist Madison Smartt Bell.
So make your plans to join us on Oct. 6, for what will surely be a great presentation.