Jamestown Island, Virginia, US, 1996
Artist
William Earle Williams
(American, born 1950)
MediumGelatin silver print
DimensionsSheet: 10 x 8 in (25.4 x 20.3 cm)
Credit LinePicker Art Gallery. Purchase of the Gary M. Hoffer '74 Memorial Photography Collection Fund
Object number2022.3.3
DescriptionWilliams’s photograph is a meditation on the significance of the advent of slavery in the US. The year 1619 marks the arrival of enslaved Africans to the United States. English pirates seized a Portuguese slave ship bound for Central America and brought the survivors to Virginia, where they were traded for supplies and enslaved. Seven years later the first ship built in North America for the transport of enslaved Africans set sail from Massachusetts. By 1641 the colonies began to codify slavery into law. In 1662 it became hereditary, and generations of children were born into slavery until the Thirteenth Amendment was passed in 1865.
ClassificationsPhotographs
Exhibitions
Core / Collections
Talk soon, America
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