LEDE:
Income inequality,
migration, the #metoo movement, criminal justice
reform, dominate headlines. A new exhibit in New York City argues all
those issues are linked by what the artist calls the “Architecture of Slavery.”
Special correspondent, Duarte Geraldino
introduces us to Keris Salmon, whose works forces us to see what she
arrives are the lingering signs of America’s slave economy.
FOR ANCHOR COPY - Smith
College Museum of Art has officially acquired “We Have Made These Lands What
They Are.”
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Duarte
Geraldino: Artist Keris Salmon is
intrigued by the story of an infant named Alexandre. He was the son, it would
appear, of enslaved parents. likely born on the plantation where Salmon took
this photo.
She
imagines he lived in this former slave cabin, which is still standing today.
She
took the photo on a recent visit to the Destrehan plantation, just outside of
New Orleans.
Keris Salmon: It's outlining the journey of Alexandre. He came with his mother
and he was nursing.
Duarte
Geraldino: By pairing a photo of the cabin with the text
from a database of slave records from the 1700s, Keris
Salmon recreates this historical moment. One detail stands out to her.
Keris Salmon: They're calling Alexandre -- his race is “mulatto rouge”. If the
father is black and the mother is black --how is this child mulatto rouge?
Duarte
Geraldino: Oh I see what you're saying --.
Keris Salmon: It's a lie.
Duarte
Geraldino: This was the child of a potential slave owner
and his slave.
Duarte
Geraldino: We have a child that's 0 years old who is mulatto
as you say, a father who is black and a mother who's black. There's a secret
somewhere there--.
Keris Salmon: There is a secret there.
Duarte
Geraldino: At the heart of that secret are the
differences between what is known and what is shown about life during America’s
Age of Slavery.
Keris Salmon: The words are simply: " here
I lives. Here I dies" and these are words that were spoken by Sibby Kelly who was a black slave midwife.
Duarte
Geraldino: We spoke with Keris
Salmon at the International Print Center in New York City, where her work is on
display through mid-June.
In a collection of 18
prints, Salmon juxtaposes words from historical records, letters, bills of sale
and other archival texts with photos she took at more than a dozen plantations
over the past three years across seven southern states. She calls the
series “We Have Made These Lands What They Are: The Architecture Of Slavery.”
Keris Salmon: The title comes from an encounter just after emancipation between
a group of blacks and a group of whites in North Carolina and the blacks seem
to be running back to their former places of enslavement--
Duarte Geraldino: Running back to where
they were enslaved?
Keris Salmon: Exactly.
And the white people incredulously asked. "What the heck are you doing?
Why why are you running back to the place where you
were imprisoned?" And they answered almost in unison. "We have made
these lands what they are." And that is true.
Duarte
Geraldino: Salmon’s art and photography compels us to zoom-in
to the “everydayness of slave life.” It makes us wonder what’s gone
and --critically-- what’s still around us.
Duarte
Geraldino: It’s not the chains. It's not the whips. It's
not these sort of icons of slavery that so many of us are used to. You focus on
things that are fairly pedestrian. Why?
Keris Salmon: Well, life then was fairly pedestrian. I mean yes there were
whips, chains, manacles, leg irons, neck irons. But this is the kind of
thing that people encountered every day, black and white. You know the sweep of
a banister, the geometry of a fence, the-- uh, a bird about to take off in
flight in the presence of people who were imprisoned there.
Duarte
Geraldino: Salmon works with Brooklyn-based printmakers
Peter Kruty and Sayre Gaydos. Together, they set the look of the series. They
designed the typeface so that it resembled the one used on 19th century posters
that announced slave runaways and auctions.
Sayre
Gaydos: One of the things that Keris and I talked about when we first started working on
the text of these projects is to try to focus on the type, the phrasing without
hitting you over the head with what it’s about. So it’s kind of -
Peter
Kruty: almost like a hidden
message or something.
Keris Salmon: The words are not literal to the image - it allows the viewer to
use one’s own imagination.
Duarte
Geraldino: For Keris Salmon, That
shift in perspective is subtle but powerful . She
spent 25 years as television journalist for NBC, ABC, and PBS, where she
enabled millions of people to see news events, but now -- as a print artist --
she is asking you to look through the eyes of a slave…with all the pain,
complexity and stolen moments of joy that come with that particular American
view.
Frank
Williams: You're doing very well.
Keris Salmon: Thank you.
Duarte
Geraldino: She began her series five years ago when she
visited a plantation ... with her then-boyfriend, now-husband Frank Williams.
Frank
Williams: We went together. It
came about because a man named John Baker who had was descended from one of the
slaves at Wessyngton plantation had spent about 15
years writing the history of that plantation. We went out to visit the current
owner of the plantation who acquired it from my family in the 1980s.
Duarte
Geraldino: So hold on one second: This is not just any
plantation. You said your family, your family owned the plantation?
Frank
Williams: Yes.
Duarte
Geraldino: For how many years?
Frank
Williams: They had owned it since
1790.
Duarte
Geraldino: You walking at a plantation where your family owned-- not only the
plantation but hundreds of slaves-- with your black wife.
Frank
Williams: Correct.
Duarte
Geraldino You, there, many years later with your white
husband.
Keris Salmon: Mhhm.
Duarte
Geraldino: -- whose family owned the plantation. That's a lot.
Keris Salmon: It was life altering for me. I felt like if this had been more
150- 200 years ago the circumstances would have been quite different. And I
think that's true. We would have been playing very different roles.
Keris Salmon When I arrived there I was a journalist. And when I left on that
very same day I became an artist. I couldn't leave without making something out
of it. Or or or -- trying
to understand it in a way that that I can live with.
Duarte Geraldino: Her way of understanding
America’s history and present was to pair a photograph of Wessyngton
plantation large stately house with an excerpt from Baker’s book:
Quote: “With the other slaves, Sarah went to
the banks of Caleb’s Creek to collect clay. They carried the clay up the hill
where the mansion now stands. They built that Big House brick by brick.”
Keris Salmon: What I want to point out here is that the institution of slavery
is the foundation -- the architectural
foundation for our current American situation.
Duarte
Geraldino: How so?
Keris Salmon: It
just set the set the ground for it. I mean separating children from their--
from their parents in the 18th century. I don't know what it was probably
thought of as barbaric then, but who cared. We're still doing it now.
Duarte
Geraldino: What do you think is still here today based on
your art? What kind of systems? Economic, social systems?
Keris Salmon:Unequal Education. Redlining in
housing. Mass incarceration. I could go on and on. I mean the things that we
talk about on a daily basis today have their roots in the American slave
economy.
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TIMECODE |
LOWER
THIRD |
1 |
01:58 |
Keris Salmon Visual Artist |
2 |
02:46 |
Duarte Geraldino Special Correspondent |
3 |
03:48 |
Sayre Gaydos Printmaker |
4 |
05:40 |
Keris Salmon Visual Artist |
5 |
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