The Delta Queen comes from my experience in the Mississippi Delta in the 1970s. I grew up in Denver and had never been to the South. When I was drafted, in 1969, and stationed in Virginia, it was the first time I’d seen a large population of Black people. This piqued my curiosity, so my friend David Stevens and I made several photographic expeditions to the Mississippi Delta. What I saw there, even back then, was what seemed like ancient history – a place where time stood still. The artifacts in my Delta Queen series are the essence of the people and places I encountered.
