Debra L Ferguson, AgFax Managing Editor and photographer specializing in agriculture and rural lifestyles, will be talking about This Delta, a traveling exhibit of her Mississippi Delta images, on Friday, August 7 at 7 p.m. at the the Holmes County Arts Council next to Cohen’s on The Courthouse Square in Lexington, Mississippi off Highway 17.
This Delta is a collection of images from her 30 years of shooting the Mississippi Delta. Eight traveling panels display her work with individual titles: Delta Folks, Delta Relics, Going to Town, Nature’s Rhythm, Passing Through, Sacred Spaces and Taming the Land. The exhibit is also available for viewing on the website, thisdelta.com
The exhibit is a collaboration between Ferguson and Emily Jones, Delta State University Archivist at the DSU Archives and Museum in Cleveland, Mississippi.
“This has been a labor of love for the both of us,” said Jones. “We first talked about traveling exhibits when we worked together on another exhibit, Vanishing Delta.” Ferguson was awarded the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters photography award for Vanishing Delta in 2007. “Ever since then, we have talked about what an exhibit of her work might look like in a traveling format. Finally, we did it,” added Jones.
A 1974 graduate of Delta State University, Ferguson works as a magazine and advertising photographer, specializing in agricultural and rural lifestyle subjects. She is also a partner with her husband, Owen Taylor, in AgFax Media, an online agricultural news organization. Her photography has appeared in Farm Journal, Progressive Farmer, Southern Living Travel and a variety of other publications and advertising campaigns. A prolific agricultural stock photographer, her images are represented by agencies in the U.S., Europe and Asia.
“Emily and I had a lot of fun creating this second exhibit from my images. I left the Delta in the early 1970s but it was always home,” said Ferguson. “Luckily for me, my family and my work assignments kept bringing me back often enough to create a body of work. I’m honored and very excited to share these images, many of which have never been seen.”
For more information about the Holmes County Arts Council event, call Sally Cohen at 601-927-7494.
If you would like to host the traveling This Delta exhibit, contact Emily Jones, Delta State University at 662-846-4780 or email: ejones@deltastate.edu
This Delta was made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities through the Mississippi Humanities Council.
