Bill Steber is a graduate of Middle Tennessee State University with degrees in English and Photography. He has worked at the Tennessean newspaper in Nashville as a staff photographer since 1989, where he has won over thirty regional and national photojournalism awards. His documentary work has been exhibited widely throughout the South. In 1997, Steber was awarded an Alicia Patterson Foundation grant to continue a project documenting Blues Culture in Mississippi that he started in 1993. The grant was for one year and during that time Steber was on sabbatical from the Tennessean. The project combines portraits of blues musicians playing at home and in clubs with images that describe what remains of the rural African-American culture that gave rise to the blues. Examples include, juke joints, cotton farming, sacred music, rural church services, river baptisms, folk religion and superstition, life on Parchman penitentiary, hill country African fife and drum music, and diverse regional blues styles. In addition, Steber is combining these images with field interviews that put the photographs in an historical perspective.
David Johnson Elba, AL, 1996
Hellhound Ebenezer, MS 1997
Jukin' at Thompson Grocery Bobo, MS 1994
Little Bill Wallace Leland, MS 1995
Lonnie Pitchford. Quito, MS, 1996
Smitty's Red Top Lounge. Clarksdale, MS 1998
Bentonia Blues. Bentonia, MS 1993
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