Nashville-based photographer Tammy Mercure has been photographing life in the southeastern U.S. since 2008.

Her pictures, which show everything from beauty pageants to NASCAR races with 160,000 attendees, give a snapshot of what life is like in the American South.

The series, titled "Cavaliers," has been featured in The Daily Mail and NPR, and garnered Mercure the title of one of Oxford American's 100 New Superstars of Southern Art in the Visual South.

Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri are just a few of the states she has visited to chronicle the culture and spirit of the amazing people who live there.

Mercure's images prove there really is no place on earth quite like the South.