THE BLACK BELT // A brief visual study of conservation, resistance and religion in Alabama's Black Belt

The Black Belt is a Southern band of land winding through several states, its name coined from its fertile dark topsoil and the land’s cotton development attributed to enslaved African labor. Due to the rural isolation and lack of economic opportunities, generations of residents have faced an array of social problems fixed within structural and systemic racism that range from unemployment to voting disenfranchisement.

This series is rooted within the Alabama state lines of the Black Belt, a region that was the historic epicenter of resistance during the civil rights movement, and the seedbed for revolutionary activism. The images here were shot over three weeks within in the counties of Dallas, Perry and Lowndes. They are framed in conservation, resistance, and religion; sometimes visually existing where all three cultural practices intersect.