Dilapidation, back roads, sand-clay, community character & Georgia.

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 have spent twelve years driving and walking along sand-clay roads and small rural highways in a five-county stretch of east Georgia, documenting remarkable and imperiled places. “Coming Down South” is a requiem for small towns and communities along east Georgia back roads, where churches, homes and businesses are yielding to inexorable forces of time and neglect—as people young and old heed the call of cities and faraway work, leaving others, like home, behind. I’ve doubled back time and again to bear witness to these changes, sometimes gradual, often lurching—with a summer storm, an opened roof, a spark against heart-pine tinder or, less remarkable, dismantling for what can be had in salvage. —Kathleen Galvin

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Kathleen Galvin is a Virginia-based writer and photographer. She completed an MFA in creative writing at the Mississippi University for Women with a focus on poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Cimarron Review, Cowboy Jamboree, Georgia Backroads Magazine, Zócalo Public Square, Terrain.org, UnLost Journal, Flash, Mud Season Review, The Tishman Review, Pithead Chapel and Xavier Review. (All photos © Kathleen Galvin)