Mikael Levin Critical Places

CRITICAL PLACES

CRITICAL PLACES; 15 SITES OF AMERICAN SLAVE REBELLION

(2019-Ongoing)

This project is about how the rebellions of the enslaved are remembered (or not remembered) in the landscape. In photographing these sites I mark them as critical places in a topography of national historical consciousness, showing how I see these rebellions still echoing in social patterns and economic structures, and also still echoing in the very landscape where these events took place, places now often transformed beyond recognition.

Some of the fifteen rebellions that I have selected to work on are better known, some more obscure. They span their general timeframe, roughly cover the geographic distribution, and also roughly cover the general typology of these rebellions —fight or flight, active or suppressed, real or falsely rumored. That said, this project is meant to be more a personal reflection on, rather than a historical representation of, the rebellions and their aftermath. I come to this project as an outsider, with all the advantages and disadvantages that might entail.

I have been traveling to these sites, photographing, and then where possible also returning to exhibit the work in a venue associated with the rebellion, presenting the photographs accompanied by a short text telling of the rebellion and of my experience visiting the site. In these exhibitions I work with people met locally to build awareness and initiate a reckoning around modes of remembrance and the values expressed thereby. To date such exhibitions have been held at the Boyden Gallery of Saint Mary's College of Maryland, the Slave Cabin Gallery at Melrose, Natchez, Mississippi, Southwest Mississippi Center for Culture and Learning, at Alcorn State University, Mississippi, and the Lincoln Colored School in Canton, Missouri. (Link to installation views)