By Kelsey Wagner

A twanged accent. Cowboy boots. Hospitality. Just the way heat is associated with the South, these stereotypes are associated with its people. It seems as though it could never be more contrasted than with those stereotypes associated with northerners, which include being rude, liberal, and expensive. Although there’s no way that stereotypes can apply to every person in a certain region, they do say a lot about the population as a whole. However, what happens when the North and South are crossed? I asked myself this question; along with how do native Southerners differ from those who are transplanted here?

Being a student at Duke University benefitted my search for answers to these questions more than I could’ve hoped. A world-renowned university, Duke enrolls students from as close as a couple minutes down the road to as far as the other side of the world. Similarly, being on the field hockey team here at Duke helped me find two people with extremely different backgrounds, but with a commonality to tie them together. In photographing Ashley, a Wall, New Jersey native, and Savannah, a Raleigh, North Carolina native, I was able to look closely at the similarities and differences between the two, and draw some conclusions. Most importantly, I found that although affected by different backgrounds and environments, the way in which people interact is ultimately the same, regardless of regional origin.