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If Americans look carefully enough, they’ll find that evidence of structures of segregation — and marks of white supremacy — still surrounds them. A photo essay captures the traces of oppression hiding in plain sight in the architecture around us. https://nyti.ms/39xxp0w
“The testimonies our landscapes offer are more honest than many of the things we intentionally present,” the photographer Richard Frishman writes. “Our built environment, in other words, is a kind of societal autobiography, writ large.” https://nyti.ms/2KXixOJ
Some of the sites he found were unmarked, overlooked and largely forgotten like bricked-over segregated entrances. Others depict the sites where Black people were attacked, killed or abducted — some marked and widely known, some not. https://nyti.ms/2KXixOJ
On Chartres Street in New Orleans, above an arched doorway, is a curious and enigmatic inscription: “CHANGE.” The letters mark the onetime site of the St. Louis Hotel & Exchange, where enslaved people were once sold. https://nyti.ms/2KXixOJ
The locked black double doors aside Seattle’s Moore Theatre might be mistaken for a service entrance. “It wasn’t until the summer of 2020 that the tragic nature of this obscure door resonated with the sobering reminder on the marquee,” writes Frishman. https://nyti.ms/2KXixOJ
The small side window at Edd’s Drive-In, a restaurant in Pascagoula, Mississippi, appears to be a drive-up. It was actually a segregated window used in the Jim Crow-era to serve Black customers. https://nyti.ms/2KXixOJ
These photographs are less about the places themselves and more about the people who once populated them. The photographer’s goal is to heighten awareness, motivate action and spark an honest conversation about the legacy of racial injustice in America. https://nyti.ms/2KXixOJ
Many of the locations Frishman documented have already disappeared. The painted sign for Clark’s Cafe in Huntington, Oregon, which trumpeted “ALL WHITE HELP,” was destroyed shortly after he photographed it. https://nyti.ms/2KXixOJ
Slavery is often referred to as America’s “original sin.”
“Through these photographs, I’m trying to preserve the physical evidence of that sin — because, when the telling traces are erased, the lessons risk being lost,” Frishman writes. https://nyti.ms/2KXixOJ
“Through these photographs, I’m trying to preserve the physical evidence of that sin — because, when the telling traces are erased, the lessons risk being lost,” Frishman writes. https://nyti.ms/2KXixOJ
