Take Me to the Water: Immersion Baptism in Vintage Music and Photography

A powerful audio-visual immersion into the ritual of baptism as lived in America between 1890 and 1950.

Take Me to the Water pairs 25 rare and remastered recordings of sermons, hymns, and gospel songs with 75 evocative sepia photographs depicting actual immersion baptisms. Produced by Grammy-winning Lance Ledbetter, this edition features essays by celebrated writer Lucy Sante and photographs curated from Jim Linderman’s 20-year baptism archive (now housed at the International Center of Photography).

What’s Included

• 25 audio tracks recorded from 1924–1940
• View the complete tracklist here: [Insert hosted PDF link]
• 96-page illustrated PDF book, including:
• 75 historic photographs of immersion baptisms
• Essays by Lucy Sante and Jim Linderman
• Contextual notes on both the image and sound traditions

Praise & Reviews

“Ledbetter has an encyclopedic knowledge of American blues, country, and folk music, and has released what many consider the greatest gospel compilation ever made.”

— The New Yorker

“These pictures and the music that accompanies them transmit all the emotional information: the excitement and the serenity, the fellowship and the warmth… You would have to have a heart of tin not to recognize this as one of the happiest collections of archival photographs ever assembled.”

— Lucy Sante, from the introduction