Deep Inside the Blues

PRAISE FOR THE AUTHOR: “The urgent need to preserve a cornerstone of American culture led folklorists like John Lomax to travel the country documenting early blues recordings and writers like Amiri Baraka to publish Blues People: Negro Music in White America. Although Margo Cooper did not know it when she began more than twenty years ago, she has followed that tradition and produced a documentary project that archives the oral and visual histories of blues musicians, their families, and communities in northern Mississippi and the Delta.” - ayemi shakur, New York TimesPRAISE FOR THE AUTHOR: “Cooper’s images remind us that the blues is as much attitude or way of life as art form… . She sees herself as an advocate for the music, a celebrant, but not an apologist. Clearly, her photographs are a labor of love.” - Mark Feeney, Boston Globe“Deep Inside the Blues avoids the culture-wide tendency to romanticize and elegize its subjects as ‘the last surviving bluesmen’ or view them solely as conduits for the pain of racial oppression. Instead, Cooper’s interviews offer a nuanced celebration of the musicians she has come to know—indomitable individuals, storytellers and healers both, who have etched themselves into the world’s imagination.” - Adam Gussow, author of Whose Blues? Facing Up to Race and the Future of the Music“Deep Inside the Blues is truly historic. It is a stunning tribute to the musicians and to Cooper for her vision and persistence in gathering their photographs and oral histories.” - William R. Ferris, author of I AM A MAN: Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement, 1960-1970

Margo Cooper is a photographer and oral historian working in the classic documentary tradition. She is a longtime contributing writer and photographer for Living Blues magazine. Her work has also appeared in the New York Times Lens blog.