History Is Lunch: Margo Cooper, 'Deep Inside the Blues'

On October 16, 2024, Margo Cooper presented “Deep Inside the Blues” as part of the History Is Lunch series.

For thirty years, Cooper has been documenting the lives of blues musicians, their families and homes, neighborhoods, and gigs. Her photographic work combines late-career images of such legendary figures as Bo Diddley, B.B. King, and Pinetop Perkins with youthful shots of Cedric Burnside, Shemekia Copeland, and Sharde Thomas.

In 1993, Cooper began photographing in the clubs around New England, then in Chicago, and before long in Mississippi and Arkansas. On her very first trips to the state in 1997 and 1998, Cooper captured shots of Sam Carr, Frank Frost, Bobby Rush, and Otha Turner, among others.

“As I became friendly with the musicians through my photography, I learned about their experiences, their influences, and the joy that music brought to them and their communities,” said Cooper. “I became committed to recording as many stories as I could.”

Her new book “Deep Inside the Blues” collects thirty-four of Cooper’s interviews and more than 160 of her photographs. William R. Ferris, former director of the National Endowment for the Humanities, called the book “truly historic. It is a stunning tribute to the musicians and to Cooper for her vision and persistence in gathering their photographs and oral histories.”

Cooper is a photographer and oral historian based in New Hampshire. She is a longtime contributing writer and photographer for Living Blues magazine, and her work has appeared in the “New York Times” blog “Lens.” Cooper is an Artadia award finalist and two-time Ruttenberg Arts Foundation award finalist. She studied at the Maine Photography Workshops and earned her BA in sociology and anthropology from Colgate University and her JD from the Suffolk University School of Law. In addition to her photography, Cooper serves as an attorney and guardian ad litem in the juvenile division of the family court in Nashua, New Hampshire

History Is Lunch is a weekly lecture series of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History that explores all aspects of the state’s past. The hourlong programs are held in the Craig H. Neilsen Auditorium of the Museum of Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum building at 222 North Street in Jackson and livestreamed on YouTube and Facebook.