Joel Anderson

Handprinted silver gelatin photographs of former slave dwellings painted with toners. I use an ultra-large format 8×16″ film camera to photograph and a classic wet darkroom to print. About this project: The fragile wooden shacks I’ve photographed for the past few years once were home to slaves in the United States. These walls offered the only privacy in the lives of the enslaved during the few hours they spent there each night. Out of the tens of thousands of slave houses only a tiny minority remain. Almost all have disappeared leaving nothing but foundation stones behind. A few survived in the decades after slavery as homes for sharecroppers and other poverty level workers. Some have been repurposed as everything from rental units to guest houses despite cries of sacrilege and disrespect of their history. A handful have been rebuilt and reclaimed for use as educational tools. A scattered few are crumbling away in silence even now. Small and plain, the slave dwellings were built in a similar style regardless of the location. The contrast is especially strong in locations where the grand plantation houses are within eyesight. There are slave dwellings throughout the country beyond the expected southern states. In this ongoing project I am seeking out those slave structures that are on private lands and unrestored, and photograph them and their environment before they are gone.