Outside of the Atlantas, Charlottes, and Greenvilles, writing the narrative of the new south and its cultural change, the rural south unrolls. As present today as it has ever been, it, too, continues to move, obstinate in its defiance of the obvious currents that are leaving it further and further behind.
The small towns of this region exude a curious sense of pride and stoicism, mixed with hope and the obvious effects of a long, slow decline. With each passing year there are fewer and fewer who remember the glory days each town has enjoyed, but there is a present light that glimmers like faith.
The south is a region in whose every part the past is very much its present. These photographs do not criticize or mourn. They do not praise this landscape as if it were a rare and endangered place. They are a verse, an ode to a slowly fading present.
(These images are part of a larger, finished project. petercstitt.com )
