Without a doubt, the busiest photographer in Alabama this past year was Carol M. Highsmith. The energetic shutterbug has just finished a four-month stint in the state, traveling some 20,000 miles and shooting more than 4,000 images. The photos depict the whole “length and breadth” of the state, from public monuments to barber shops, and decaying wooden barns to the glory that is Alabama football. The photos are the first in a new project called 21st Century America, a state-by-state look at, well, us.

“People would say, ‘You must be exhausted,’” Highsmith says. “But I got so hooked on it, I almost had trouble sleeping because I’d get so excited about the next day. I just loved it.” Her ultimate goal is to photograph three states a year for the next sixteen years or so, donating all the images copyright-free to the Library of Congress, which has a special archive set up for her work. And in a decidedly 21st-century twist, the photos will be downloadable for anyone and everyone, be it the local visitors’ bureau or historians a hundred years from now. “We need to record ourselves,” she says. “We know the value of looking back at what America looked like. It was fascinating, wasn’t it? Well, people will find us fascinating, too.”