© Jeanine Michna-Bales
Currently not on view
Hiding Out Back. Slave Cemetery, Mount Locust Stand and Plantation, Jefferson County, Mississippi,
2014, printed 2019
Jeanine Michna-Bales, born 1971, Midland, MI; active Dallas, TX
2019-75
Prior to the Civil War, an estimated one hundred thousand slaves attempted escape, traveling along the Underground Railroad, a network of safe houses and secret routes maintained without centralized leadership by clergy, abolitionists, and both free and enslaved black people. From 2002 to 2016, Michna-Bales charted a 1,400-mile route from Louisiana to Ontario, Canada. She then traveled this largely undocumented path to visualize the conditions and landscapes that slaves fearfully encountered under the cover of darkness. Here her choice of location—a slave cemetery purposefully placed on the outskirts of the property—shows a logical hiding place for a fleeing slave, while also alluding to those who died in bondage and whose names went unrecorded.
Information
Title
Hiding Out Back. Slave Cemetery, Mount Locust Stand and Plantation, Jefferson County, Mississippi
Dates
2014, printed 2019
Maker
Medium
Chromogenic print
Dimensions
image: 63.5 × 91.4 cm (25 × 36 in.)
sheet: 76.2 × 104.1 cm (30 × 41 in.)
frame: 66 × 94 × 4.1 cm (26 × 37 × 1 5/8 in.)
Credit Line
Museum purchase, Fowler McCormick, Class of 1921, Fund
Object Number
2019-75
Place Depicted
North America, United States, Mississippi, Mount Locust
Signatures
Signed in ink, on verso: JMB
Inscription
Stamped and handwritten on verso, center: jmb | Title: Hiding Out Back | Series: Through Darkness to Light | Date Composed / Printed: 2014 / 2019 | Printer: Steve Clayton @ Holland Photo Imaging | Print information: Digital Chromogenic Print | Edition: 1 of 8 | JMB | Jeanine Michna-Bales
Culture
Techniques
Subject
The artist; [Photographs Do Not Bend Gallery, Dallas, TX]; purchased by the Princeton University Art Museum, 2019.
