Partial to Home represents the culmination of a ten year period in which the photographer, Mississippi's Birney Imes, records timeless vestiges of Southern, African-American culture throughout Mississippi. These first photographs, many of which were taken during research and photography for Juke Joints, acutely pick out specific instances that are rich in drama and heritage and smack of rural ingenuity and pragmatism as a way of life in the South.

Photographs in the book range from back porch gambling to Sunday baptisms in the river, and combines the photographers knowledge with powerful subjects to make for thoughtful, provoking, and equally joyous imagery, while chronicling and preserving a way of life that resists change but is rich in history and in its sense of familiarity.

Imes has a way of surprising the viewer with his adept visual storytelling, and, even though obviously physically present in the environment of the photography, resides as the instrument by which the often barely visible is fully seen.

I highly recommend this book.

Have you ever wanted to put a face on those whacking Flannery O'Connor characters or be able to paint what Faulkner wrote? If so, then this is your book.

I worked for photographer Birney Imes for one year in Columbus, Mississippi. I was a reporter for his family newspaper. I got a chance to live in the area where Whispering Pines is located and get a feel for Imes's hometown, which is the basis for nearly all of his photographs.

I've driven by the old Whispering Pines building many times, but you wouldn't look twice at the broken down place. What makes Imes a great photographer is that he stops, gets out, and meets the people behind the place. Since he's a hometown boy, the people in the area warm to him and don't mind the intrusion of his camera.

Imes's photos of the haunting owner of Whispering Pines and his surroundings are vintage South -- what you never see from the road. He uses bright lighting in full-bled color to depict a place that now is crubbling in grey dust.

This book comes in a close second to Imes's Juke Joint, a collection of photographs of various southern juke joints in Mississippi. But if you want a mystical vision -- a southern mirage, try Whispering Pines.

The photographer does an excellent job of using his subject to tell his thoughts. By keeping some photographs on a long exposure, he also shows the fleeting nature of these somewhat depressed settings. Also a strong use of color to illustrate the cultural setting and importance despite the deprived economic environment. Of high importance for anyone interested in the deep south and the heritage of the mississippi delta.