The South in Color

“Bill Ferris has taught a lot of people how to embrace Southern culture. . . . Now he’s showing us what he loves in photographs.”—Daily Beast

“Reveals Ferris’s natural and direct eye, with each section growing in narrative power and scope. . . . Lyrical and sensitive, the photos reveal a dichotomy between tradition and change, rich and poor, black and white, tracking race relations in the South.”—Publishers Weekly

“A visual journal boasting 103 photographs of the region’s idiosyncratic characters and landscapes.”—Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Provides an honest and open perspective on his journey from the farm to a lifelong career as a folklorist.”—Mississippi Today

“Ferris distills his formative decades, the 1960s and '70s, into plain-spoken poetry about what life feels like in his more intimate, equitable and interconnected South. . . . In these images, Ferris' use of color shines. . . . His characters transcend the labels of black and white or have and have-not, granted a documentary pedestal from which they say their own pieces in their own voices.”—Julian Rankin, Clarion-Ledger

“Captures [a] vanishing place. . . . Striking. . . . Ferris is catching a moment of transition. . . . Much of Ferris' imagery seems timeless.”—Wilmington Star-News

“At first glance, The South in Color may appear to be a book about the difference between its subjects; for author Bill Ferris, it is about what makes them the same. Indeed, while turning through its pages, a strong sense of time, place and connection are impossible to ignore.”—Chapel Hill Magazine

“Starting with [Ferris’s] boyhood days on his family’s farm near Vicksburg, Mississippi, the book includes vivid portraits of the region’s people and buildings and reflects his ambivalent relationship with the ‘beautiful and haunting worlds that always surround me.’”—Pennsylvania Gazette

“With this book, Ferris hopes he can connect readers of today to the ‘intimate worlds’ of a bygone era in rural Mississippi.”—The Pilot

“The images are singular, never redundant, each building quietly and powerfully upon those before it.”—Memphis Commercial Appeal