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SOUTHERN INDIANA — Before he ever picked up a camera, David Modica had a passion for music.
He would mainly listen to Rock ‘n’ Roll from the late 1960s and the 1970s. After wanting to know more about the origins of his favorite genre of music, he traveled five times to the Mississippi Delta to learn about the Blues.
The Blues is one of the significant genres that inspired Rock music.
Modica is also a photographer from New Albany, and these trips to the Delta combined his two passions, photography and music.
He will be displaying the photos he took during his trips in an exhibit called “Down To The Crossroads, Images from the Mississippi Delta” at Harrison County Arts, 113 East Beaver St., Corydon, from March 15-May 11. An artist talk and Cogburn Coffee tasting is April 6 at 11 a.m.
“(The trips) started with a curiosity of about where Blues music came from and the culture of the Southern Country Blues and how its evolved,” Modica said.
Not only was he curious about the origins of Rock music, he was intrigued by the culture and buildings of the area.
The main two cameras that Modica used while he was in Mississippi. The bigger one is his view camera and the little one is his Hasselblad camera.
With this exhibit, Modica wants to tell a story through his pictures. He wants to give people a feel for area, landscape and culture of the Mississippi Delta.
He wants to convey both the musical impact the area has as well as the culture of the area itself.
“I think there’s a reality here that there’s a lot of poverty in the South and so much of it’s deep rooted in not only slavery, but post slavery and the cotton production,” Modica said. “I’m trying to tell a story about what the South looks like today as it relates to the people that wrote the Blues, who felt the Blues.”
The first time Modica went to Mississippi, he met a man named Willie Seaberry who goes by the nickname “Po’ Monkey.” He has this sharecropper’s home in the middle of a cotton field in Merigold, Mississippi.
Seaberry told him that the home was used as a Juke Joint called “Po’ Monkey’s” that was only open on Thursday nights where he played live music for people. Modica met with him and Seaberry showed him around the Juke Joint and they spoke for about an hour.
In an article by Mississippi Folklife, it was reported that Seaberry died on July 14, 2016 and the Juke Joint. has since closed.
“He was a grounded guy, he wasn’t hyped up about his image or anything else,” Modica said. “But people came from all around the world to see Po’ Monkey’s.”
On his most recent trip, Modica went to a town called Bentonia, Mississippi and met with Jimmy “Duck” Holmes who plays music at and owns Blue Front Café.
When they met, Modica and Holmes sat next to a wood stove and talked about the history of the café and town.
“He explained to me some of the differences between Gospel and Blues players and there was crossover, but genuinely if you were a Blues person you grew up playing the Blues and not necessarily Gospel,” Modica said. “The kindest guy you’d ever meet. He was happy in his life.”
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