The Road to Unforgetting gathers 175 of Pete Candler’s black-and-white film photographs from road trips across the American South from 1997 to 2022, along with his insightful essay on the imaginative potential of the unplanned detour. A meditation on “back-roading” with a film camera as a spiritual exercise, Road documents lesser-known, often unmarked, sites in the history of the South that exist off the main drag of collective memory. A powerful collaboration of word and image in search of deeper truths, Road points towards a more complete understanding of America’s most singular region.
“Pete Candler and I share a deep and abiding love for the South, despite its troubled past and complicated present. The Road to Unforgetting is a nuanced and personal exploration of both, revealed by his words and his imagery to coexist poignantly, and perhaps uniquely, in the South.”
—Sally Mann
About the Author
Born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, Pete Candler is a writer and photographer whose work has appeared in Los Angeles Review of Books, Commonweal, The Bitter Southerner, The Christian Century, The Chicago Tribune, Southern Cultures, The Washington Post, and others. He now lives in Asheville, where he writes about memory and forgetfulness in the American South. His recent publications address the legacy of white supremacy and white amnesia in the South. His new photography collection, The Road to Unforgetting (Horse & Buggy Press), is available now, and his non-fiction narrative, Prologue to the South (University of South Carolina), will be published in Fall 2023.
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