'A Vanishing Delta' Needs Your Help

Few places other can claim as much in the way of the musical style as the Mississippi Delta; however, as much as the Delta is known as "the birthplace of the blues", it may be more well-known for its staggering poverty.

When photographer Julie Dant was travelling through the Delta for the first time with her husband, she felt the need to photograph everything she saw. All of the abandoned share-cropper's homes, deserted hospitals and unpopulated main streets became Dant's window to a culture and history that is already being forgotten.

To combat the rapidly fading way of life, Dant aimed to compile her images from the trip in a coffee table book to preserve the places she saw. To raise money for its publication, Dant took to Kickstarter to drum up support. She wants to put 50 - 100 of her black and white images together for her book, "A Vanishing Delta."

The photographer writes on Kickstarter: "It became very important to me to document as many of these old abandoned buildings as I could, simply because, along with a quickly fading Delta way of life, they were disappearing right before our very eyes."

You can read more about the project on Dant's Kickstarter page here, and you can listen to the legendary Muddy Waters sing his "Mississippi Delta Blues" here.