Walker Evans’s model of social photography and with a passion for the blues. This was how Vincenzo Castella, then little more than twenty years of age, spent four months in the Southern United States in the area around the Mississippi River. His is an ethnographical study, in search of the very last bluesmen: he listens to them play and gathers their testimonies. At the same time, he discovers a ‘lesser’ America, one of places and people that are generally overlooked.

After having turned up in a drawer, in all their black-and-white glory, these photographs are now a delight for the gaze. A discovery and a return to the fascinating roots of America. These shots mark the birth of the vocation of one of the leading Italian photographers.