Whitman, Alabama

first visited Alabama in 2013 on a short-term assignment for Alabama Media Group, a digital media company that produces television and video programming and publishes three of the most prominent newspapers in the state. Though she was living in Amsterdam at the time, Crandall was so inspired by Alabama that she moved to Birmingham, became the company’s first artist-in-residence, and began developing a documentary project that would showcase the state’s citizens. But rather than use a traditional interview format, Crandall decided to center her, captures the spirit of the state and its people while illustrating the many themes of the poem—race, religion, politics, sexuality, and immigration—that the nation continues to wrestle with today.