Hallowing the Ground
Honoring Enslaved Lives Through the Spaces They Lived and Worked
By 1860, approximately 2 million enslaved people worked on cotton plantations in the United States, producing around 4.5 million bales of cotton each year.
On the eve of the Civil War, the Louisiana sugar industry alone reached a peak value of $25 million, illustrating the immense economic power generated by the exploitation of enslaved labor on sugar plantations.
$25 million dollars in 1861 would be equivalent to approximately $800 million dollars, accounting for inflation, in 2024.
“I was owned by Johnson Bell and born in New Orleans, in Loisiana. Cordin to the bill of sale, I’m eighty-six years old, and my master was a Frenchman and was real mean to me. He ran saloon and kept bad women. I don’t know nothing ‘bout my folks, if I had any, ‘crept my mama. They done tell me she was a bad woman and a French Creole. I worked ‘round master’s saloon, kep everything cleaned up after they’d have all night drinkin’ parties, men and women.”
“Anne Bell: Dats de reason I likes to sing dat old plantation spiritual, ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot, Jesus Gwinter Carry me Home’. Does I believe in ‘ligion? What else good for colored folks? I ask you if dere ain’t a heaven, what’s colored folks got to look forward to? They can’t git anywhere down here.”
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
My first exhibition and forthcoming book, Hallowing the Ground: Honoring Enslaved Lives Through the Spaces They Lived and Worked, is a photographic meditation on one of the most painful chapters in American history.
The project seeks to create a sacred space for reflection, healing, and contemplation. Through deliberate, restrained visual storytelling, Hallowing the Ground invites viewers to slow down and engage deeply with the lived realities of enslaved people—stories too often overlooked or abstracted from the landscapes where they unfolded.
At the center of the exhibition are fine art photographs of slave quarters and overseer homes located on plantations across the American South. These structures—humble, weathered, and enduring—serve as witnesses to lives shaped by forced labor, resilience, and survival.
The aim of Hallowing the Ground is to honor their lives through presence. By inviting quiet reflection, the work asks viewers to encounter this history with honesty and to consider its enduring imprint on our collective memory, personal narratives, and contemporary society.
Photographic work on this project will continue through 2026, allowing the narrative to deepen, expand, and unfold with care.
“The overseers and patterollers in the time of slavery were called poor white trash by the slaves. On the plantations, not every one, but some of the slave holders would have some certain slave women reserved for their own use. Sometimes children almost white would be born to them. I have seen many of these children. ”
Stay in Touch.
Follow the ongoing work of Hallowing the Ground through new photographs, stories, and updates as the project continues to unfold.