
“In a purposeful inversion of the news headlines from the time, my work foregrounds individuals who fought for civil rights and who were victims of retaliatory violence.”
It was a sweltering summer in 2002 and I was wandering downtown Montgomery, exploring and making photographs, when I found myself at a historical marker in front of an ornate fountain:
In front of this Court Square marker, I was struck with the understanding of what it means to erase histories, and curious about what it then means for those histories to reemerge in a collective consciousness through historical markers. This marker was new. Had it not been there, I would not have known that I was standing on the site where enslaved people were once sold and traded. The language on a historical marker can never fully describe the impact to individuals and communities, and this one made me want to know more. I started thinking about the function of markers and memorials, and how they facilitate encounters with significant and painful histories. >