Jeanine Michna-Bales
Photographs of the Underground Railroad
Marking 400 years since the start of the transatlantic slave trade in the Americas, this exhibition features selections from Jeanine Michna-Bales’s photographs of sites that freedom-seekers traveled along the Underground Railroad.
Jeanine Michna-Bales, Decision to Leave. Magnolia Plantation on the Cane River, Louisiana (from Through Darkness to Light: Photographs along on the Underground Railroad) (2013)
Jeanine Michna-Bales, Keep Going. Crossing the Tennessee River, Colbert County, Alabama (from Through Darkness to Light: Photographs along on the Underground Railroad) (2014)
About the exhibition
Marking 400 years since the start of the transatlantic slave trade in the Americas, this exhibition features selections from Jeanine Michna-Bales’s Through Darkness to Light: Photographs along the Underground Railroad series from the collection of Julia J. Norrell.
After researching the subject for more than a decade, Michna-Bales captured various sites that freedom-seekers traveled along the Underground Railroad. Recalling the fugitives who sought refuge in the dark chambers of night, Michna-Bales conjures their frightful journeys through her mysterious, night-time landscapes. One of the few visual records on the subject, this body of work “illuminate[s] the darkened corners of our shared history,” while prompting reflection about slavery’s continued reverberations in our global world.