Andrew Moore took these photos of Alabama between 2015 and 2018 and they concentrate on the lower part of the State where, in past years, cotton production was high and Jim Crow attitudes ever present towards the black population. In his essay Moore says Alabama's politics and photography are connected. Walker Evans in the thirties took a remarkable series of photos revealing the poverty of tenant farmers which appeared in the famous Let us praise famous men book and news photos of the civil rights years later again put the State on the map.
The large photos in the book capture a much more peaceful looking Alabama presented in a fascinating sequence of exterior, interior, portraits and sometimes extreme close ups of the decaying fabric of the State. I thought the color in these pictures quite exceptional especially the interior pictures revealing plenty of detail (helped by the three hundred screen Diamani used for the printing). The book is more than just a collection of seventy-nine photos because Moore goes the extra mile and makes notes of his work and thirteen back pages have thumbnails and some quite detailed background about each image.
The book is the third in the photographer's in-depth look at America. The two previous titles: Detroit Disassembled-2010 and Dirt Meridian-2015 (both published by Damiani) and now with Blue Alabama show that Moore knows how to capture the essence of quite different locations.
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