. . . we must go there in disguise & with pistols in our pockets, leaving our pocketbooks at home, making our wills before we go. 

That's Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his journal, 1845. "We" is enlightened Northerners; "there" is the frightening and despised South.  

I'm a northerner by birth but I've lived in the South a long time. It remains both confusing and fascinating to me. 

I use the camera to urge the place to present itself to me, and to force myself to be present in the place. I want to see behind its disguise, and to take off my own. 

These photos were all taken in the course of my travels around the South, mostly in the state of Alabama.