Jackson Free Press

Debra Ferguson says she and her husband of 38 years don't vacation very well. Ferguson, a photographer, and Owen Taylor, her husband and business partner, a freelance journalist, co-own AgFax Media, a 24/7 news site clearing house of agricultural news and information (agfax.com).

"We are all about agriculture," Ferguson, 59, says. Although she operates on many levels of business, agriculture remains at the center. A major focus of her work is Southern Images Photography, which specializes in photographs for agribusiness, stock images for commercial use and rural lifestyles for editorial and fine art clients. They operate their business from their home in Brandon.

The 1974 Delta State University graduate grew up in the Delta on a soybean and rice farm near Skene, a small town a little southwest of Cleveland, Miss. Her brother still operates the family farm there. She met her future husband, Taylor, while attending Delta State. The couple has two children: Sarah Condon, who is attending Yale Divinity School, and Aaron Taylor, currently an undergraduate at Delta State University.

After graduating, the couple moved to Nashville for a decade or so where Ferguson a worked in a number of media related jobs and even had a stint as the editor of "The CB Times-Journal." They moved to the Jackson area in 1986 to be closer to family and their only grandchild, Neil, son of Sarah and her husband Josh.

Ferguson has stayed close to her Delta roots since returning to Mississippi. Her award-winning photography exhibit, "The Vanishing Delta," was part of her attempt to "stop time at 1/60th of a second in the Delta," she says. "It is a process shared by all those who grew up here, or chose it as home."

Ferguson grew up with a camera in her hand. "People died early in my life, and photos became very important to document the moment," she says.

A recent grant from the Mississippi Humanities Council to Delta State University will create a traveling exhibit to feature her photographs of the Delta "while layering southern authors 'quotable quotes' with historically accurate facts to present a stunningly visual and literary piece of Delta history," says Emily Jones, and archivist at Delta State.

Ferguson says one sentence in her "Vanishing Delta" exhibit sums up her feelings for the Delta: "I left the Delta, but the Delta never left me."