The South has gotten a bad rap in the American imagination. Racist, hick, backwoods—these perpetuated narratives erase the survival of so many communities here. The South plays villain for all of America’s vices so that folks outside the South can avert their gazes, roll their eyes, and reassure themselves, “We’re bad but not that bad.” Well, the South ain’t havin’ it no more.

While this folio aims to redefine the reductive narratives used to discuss the South, it is not reactionary. It is not interested in portraying a “New South.” Instead, this folio seeks out representations of the South as it has always been, the South that has always existed outside of the pejorative fetishizing that shapes Southern narratives. 

—Diamond Forde