Holy City is a series of photographs taken in late 2019 in Charleston, South Carolina. Charleston's nickname, “Holy City,” resulted from the area being known as a place of religious tolerance in the 18th century, promoting a welcoming environment for all people. But for some of the city’s wealthiest families, their fortunes directly resulted from the region’s thriving slave trade, where over 40% of slaves entering the United States came through the city's ports.
The Holy City welcomed all people defined as people. It’s what the good people believed. And what we believed in was trade and transaction, commerce and legacy. The exchange. The market. What’s called the Lowcountry is low, deep, up to your knees in marsh sands kind of low, the rice fields in your toes, the crack of Barbados sugar cane snapping. Those sounds. Snapping. Lowcountry is a brand. A menu theme. The cuisine you can experience to experience the authentic experience of Charlestonian history. In a city where three rivers’ worth of $7 billion dollars worth of tourism converge in the present day, where once upon a merchant ship 40% of the slave trade in America came through the city's ports, Charleston is a river popular with the people defined as people.
The origin of the word “plantation” comes from the labor of planting seeds. Beneath each twenty-first century bakery and coffee shop, late night chain restaurant, or tourists’ stall selling t-shirts that say The Palmetto State in large block letters, there are seeds. There are blocks. There are seeds. Those seeds are strange seeds that once grew into feet, legs, bodies sprouting with backs bent against the sun setting into a rice field. The weight of the mud pushes back so that the body won’t be pushed further down. These laws of physics are as natural as the corresponding laws of societies. Those seeds have since sprouted cement sidewalks, asphalt roads scarred with faded lane markings, houses with siding chipped into scar tissue, the infrastructure to make things much cooler on the inside than they are on the outside amidst the binding suffocation of a Charlestonian summer day. In the heat of this kind of day, the viability of the plant thrives upon the constitution of its root.
The end of summer does not bring autumn, it only brings the fall.