Please stop by Hills & Hamlets Bookshop between noon and 3pm on Saturday May 22nd to help our friend and neighbor Nicholas Widener and his brother Andrew celebrate the launch of their new book, Both Sides of the Old Road. This is a "drop-in" event, and Nicholas and Andrew will be available to sign books, chat, and share more with you about their work.

About the book:

I use photo-genealogy in Both Sides of the Old Road to excavate my familial roots. Combining archival letters, old family photographs, and objects with my own portraits and landscapes, I endeavor to tell the story of my ancestral origins in the Black Belt region of Alabama. My brother, Andrew Widener, is a genealogist at Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) in Washington, D.C. He has researched, collected, and identified information and oddities about our family for over a decade. Halfway through this odyssey, I began to ride along with him to the Black Belt where the stories he gathered turned into visual imagery.

William Christenberry’s photographic ruminations on place and time have had a lasting impact on me. He was born in the Black Belt, not far from where I shot most of this work. Other great photographers like Walker Evans and Andrew Moore have tread there, too. The work of eminent Southerners like Sally Mann, William Eggleston, Harper Lee, and Jeff Nichols have had an influence on me and my topophilia for the South.

All in all, I seek to situate and understand my place among the generations that came before and the generations yet to come by searching for the ties that bind them together.

Nicholas Widener is the director of film studies and the head cross country coach at Woodward Academy in College Park, GA. He graduated from SCAD with an MFA in photography in 2019. He and his wife Leslie are Serenbe residents.

Andrew Widener is a genealogist at Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) in Washington, D.C. He has researched his family history for over a decade.