Rich Frishman Photography
Ghosts of Segregation American Splendor This Land Technique Videos

All human landscape has cultural meaning. Because we rarely consider our constructions as evidence of our priorities, beliefs and desires, the testimony our landscape tells is perhaps more honest than anything we might intentionally present. Our built environment is society's autobiography writ large.

Ghosts of Segregation photographically explores the vestiges of America's racism as seen in the vernacular landscape: Schools for "colored" children, theatre entrances and restrooms for "colored people," lynching sites, juke joints, jails, hotels and bus stations. What is past is prologue.

We often take our daily environments for granted, but within even the most mundane edifice may lurk an important bit of history. If we are curious and diligent, we can read our surroundings like a book. That stairway apparently to nowhere once went somewhere. The curious palimpsest of bricks covers something. What purpose did they serve?

While most of the images currently in this project are focused on the Deep South, prejudice has no geographic boundaries; I have all of America to explore. These troubling spectres are as alive today as they ever were; often cloaked in different manner, but as much current events as history. The ghosts of segregation haunt us.

To learn more about the history behind these pictures, view or download the 55-page Ghosts of Segregation PDF

Rich Frishman

 

 

Hanging Tree; Goliad, Texas 2018 16th Street Baptist Church; Birmingham, Alabama 2018 Houston Negro Hospital School of Nursing; Houston, Texas 2018 Shiloh Rosenwald School;  Longview, Texas 2018 Negro League Stadium; Hamtramck, Michigan 2018 Bridge Over Black Bayou; Glendora, Mississippi 2018 Border Wall; Brownsville, Texas 2018 Redlining Wall; Detroit, Michigan 2018 Segregation Wall; Gonzales, Texas 2016 Remains of Sunset Cafe skene; Chicago, Illinois 2018 Railroad Hotel; Clarksdale, Mississippi 2018 Po' Monkey's; Merigold, Mississippi 2018 Colored Entrance to Texan Theatre; Kilgore, Texas 2018 Colored Entrances; Cleveland, Mississippi 2018 Colored Entrance; Philadelphia, Mississippi 2018 Colored Entrance; Meridian, Mississippi 2018 Colored Entrance to Paramount Theatre; Clarksdale, Mississippi 2018 Colored Entrance to Saenger Theatre; Hattiesburg, Mississippi 2018 Colored Entrance; Tylertown, Mississippi 2018 University of Alabama Foster Auditorium, Tuscaloosa, Alabama 2018 Medgar Evers' House; Jackson, Mississippi 2018 Neshoba County Jail; Philadelphia, Mississippi 2018 Lynching site of James Chaney, Mickey Schwerner and Andrew Goodman; Neshoba County, Mississippi 2018 29th Street Beach, site of the outbreak of the Chicago Race Riot of 1919; Chicago, Illinois 2018 Monument to the Dead; Manzanar, California 2018