Brazoria County Texas: 29°0’5″ N 95°32’6″ W
Archival Pigment Print, 44 x 24 inches
Archival Pigment Print, 44 x 24 inches
Archival Pigment Print, 44 x 24 inches
Archival Pigment Print, 44 x 24 inches
Archival Pigment Print, 44 x 24 inches
Archival Pigment Print, 44 x 24 inches
Built, 1860c
Archival Pigment Print 16 x 20 inches
Built, 1860c
Archival Pigment Print 16 x 20 inches
The Federal Writers Project began in the Library of Congress as a part of Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” during the depression era. The mission of the project was to collect oral accounts from those formerly enslaved as a way to account for the experience of slavery since so few records existed that expressed such an experience from the perspective of the enslaved. This work documents sites described in the Texas Slave Narratives. These sites have been located based on descriptions from people interviewed in the narratives and through the use of County-level records to locate properties in instances where only the name of a former slave owner was given. By photographing these sites I hope to connect the contribution of the enslaved to the land and to consider their legacy over a half-century later. I began using the Texas Slave Narratives as a supplement for architectural research, scouring its pages for clues about how plantation homes were constructed since enslaved people built them. I quickly realized, however, that the contemporary issues raised by the document itself were much broader than architecture alone. These accounts from formerly enslaved people, if expanded in a modern context, offer the unique possibility to connect descendants with their ancestors, and to address questions about the nature of bias during the transcription process.