giganova
Well-known
Hi all —
I am working on a new photography project that I call “Road to Freedom.” Road to Freedom is a photographic journey into American history, to the sites where American slaves struggled to escape slavery and fought their way to freedom. The DelMarVa peninsula was a hotbed for the fight to end slavery before and during the Civil War. It is a wetland region covered partially by Delaware, Maryland and Virginia that is bordered by the Chesapeake Bay on the West and by the Atlantic Ocean on the East, right at the border between the Confederate and Union States. It is a hot, humid and swampy place, with brackish waters, mosquitoes and snakes in unforgiving terrain, and has large areas of farmlands where slaves were tending the fields. Man of the plantations still exist and some are still owned by the same families that once held slaves.
Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) and Harriett Tubman (1822-1913) were both born into slavery in this relatively small area. Frederick Douglass was a slave, a social reformer, writer, and statesman later in his life. Harriett Tubman was a slave, an abolitionist and political activist. She is most famous for her efforts to help other slaves escape their masters on what is known as the “Underground Railroad” network of antislavery activists who harbored fugitive slaves in their safe houses.
I am rediscovering the places where all these dramatic historical events took place, and are documenting the sites (or what’s left of them) and the unforgiving and dramatic landscapes. During the last 12 months, I have taken 8 trips to the area. Here is my workflow:
This is not your typical digital photography; it is a slow, “hands-on” approach in an effort to make this project more tangible: I take photos with a Mamiya RZ 6x7 camera (mostly on tripod) on Ilford FP4, then develop the negatives in Ilford DD-X and scan them to have a backup of the original negatives. But there’s a twist: after I developed the negatives, I take a handful of soil, dirty earth & mud and water that I have collected at the same site where I took the photos, and rub the most soil onto the negatives. Then I take the dirty negatives, put them into the oven and burn the earth onto the negatives! After that I scan them with a flatbed scanner. Below are some examples. The negatives are in essence not only touched by the soil where the fugitive slaves fought their way into freedom, the negatives become one with the earth. I can tell you, it is quite an emotion to take technical perfect negatives with great effort, only to nearly destroy them later while I watch how smoke is rising from the mud-covered negatives in the oven! 😀
Please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions — thanks!
This is the exact location where the first slave ships arrived from Africa in 1742 at the shore in Easton Maryland:
Frederick Douglass was born into slavery only a few feet from this location at the muddy bank of the Tackahoe River:
This is the grand entrance to the Wye plantation where Frederick Douglass was held as a slave and brutally beaten by his master. At its peak, the Wye plantation had up to 1,000 slaves. Today, it is still is an active farm and now in the 11th generation of the Wye family property owners:
Right next to the plantation is this old tree that looks like a ghost from the past:
This damaged tree is also from the time when Douglass worked on these fields:
I am working on a new photography project that I call “Road to Freedom.” Road to Freedom is a photographic journey into American history, to the sites where American slaves struggled to escape slavery and fought their way to freedom. The DelMarVa peninsula was a hotbed for the fight to end slavery before and during the Civil War. It is a wetland region covered partially by Delaware, Maryland and Virginia that is bordered by the Chesapeake Bay on the West and by the Atlantic Ocean on the East, right at the border between the Confederate and Union States. It is a hot, humid and swampy place, with brackish waters, mosquitoes and snakes in unforgiving terrain, and has large areas of farmlands where slaves were tending the fields. Man of the plantations still exist and some are still owned by the same families that once held slaves.
Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) and Harriett Tubman (1822-1913) were both born into slavery in this relatively small area. Frederick Douglass was a slave, a social reformer, writer, and statesman later in his life. Harriett Tubman was a slave, an abolitionist and political activist. She is most famous for her efforts to help other slaves escape their masters on what is known as the “Underground Railroad” network of antislavery activists who harbored fugitive slaves in their safe houses.
I am rediscovering the places where all these dramatic historical events took place, and are documenting the sites (or what’s left of them) and the unforgiving and dramatic landscapes. During the last 12 months, I have taken 8 trips to the area. Here is my workflow:
This is not your typical digital photography; it is a slow, “hands-on” approach in an effort to make this project more tangible: I take photos with a Mamiya RZ 6x7 camera (mostly on tripod) on Ilford FP4, then develop the negatives in Ilford DD-X and scan them to have a backup of the original negatives. But there’s a twist: after I developed the negatives, I take a handful of soil, dirty earth & mud and water that I have collected at the same site where I took the photos, and rub the most soil onto the negatives. Then I take the dirty negatives, put them into the oven and burn the earth onto the negatives! After that I scan them with a flatbed scanner. Below are some examples. The negatives are in essence not only touched by the soil where the fugitive slaves fought their way into freedom, the negatives become one with the earth. I can tell you, it is quite an emotion to take technical perfect negatives with great effort, only to nearly destroy them later while I watch how smoke is rising from the mud-covered negatives in the oven! 😀
Please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions — thanks!
This is the exact location where the first slave ships arrived from Africa in 1742 at the shore in Easton Maryland:

Frederick Douglass was born into slavery only a few feet from this location at the muddy bank of the Tackahoe River:

This is the grand entrance to the Wye plantation where Frederick Douglass was held as a slave and brutally beaten by his master. At its peak, the Wye plantation had up to 1,000 slaves. Today, it is still is an active farm and now in the 11th generation of the Wye family property owners:

Right next to the plantation is this old tree that looks like a ghost from the past:

This damaged tree is also from the time when Douglass worked on these fields:
