I use photo-genealogy in Both Sides of the Old Road to excavate my familial roots. Combining archival letters, old family photographs, and objects with my own portraits and landscapes, I endeavor to tell the story of my ancestral origins in the Black Belt region of Alabama. My brother, Andrew Widener, is a genealogist at Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) in Washington, D.C. He has researched, collected, and identified information and oddities about our family for over a decade. Halfway through this odyssey, I began to ride along with him to the Black Belt where the stories he gathered turned into visual imagery.

William Christenberry’s photographic ruminations on place and time have had a lasting impact on me. He was born in the Black Belt, not far from where I shot most of this work. Other great photographers like Walker Evans and Andrew Moore have tread there, too. The work of eminent Southerners like Sally Mann, William Eggleston, Harper Lee, and Jeff Nichols have had an influence on me and my topophilia for the South.

All in all, I seek to situate and understand my place among the generations that came before and the generations yet to come by searching for the ties that bind them together.

Each copy of the book comes signed by the authors.