“The Inner Passage” // Ginna Richards

A highway centuries older than the ones we travel today, there exists a largely undocumented 300-mile network of colonial-era canals connecting our Lowcountry rivers for the purpose of travel, trade, and survival. We are incredibly honored to host Virginia McGee Richards for the launch of The Inner Passage, the result of a fifteen-year project to honor a deep history relatively unknown. Richards’ photographs, which were developed on site using the water of the fields and riverbanks, include portraits of Lowcountry descendants, as well as centuries-old “Witness Trees” — live oaks that still stand over the waterway, yet also witness to centuries of planting seasons, river baptism, prayers, war, poverty, massacres, and canal construction. Part fieldwork, part excavation, this important collection of work, along with an essay by Dr. Imani Perry offer a powerful living map of history.

About the Author

Virginia McGee Richards is a nationally recognized documentary photographer and historian who lived in South Carolina for over a decade. She began work on photographs for The Inner Passage series after swimming in a local creek near her home in Charleston. Curious about the creek’s origins, she went to the local public library and learned that her swimming hole had been originally constructed by enslaved laborers in the early 1700s. For over fifteen years, Richards read archival documents and studied colonial maps to piece together the story of the Inner Passage. The waterway, which was constructed as a shipping lane for planters’ commodities, also served as an important route to freedom for enslaved and indentured people.

A feature of Richards’ photographs and research, “What the Haunting ‘Inner Passage’ Represented to the Enslaved” appeared in Smithsonian Magazine (March 2022) and was awarded “the best in print and digital journalism” by the American Society of Magazine Editors. Her photographs received the Gold Medal Prize at the Lowell Thomas Competition (March 2022) and appeared in a juried show at the North Carolina Museum of Art. They have also been exhibited at The Light Factory in Charlotte, North Carolina, and at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center and Cincinnati Museum Center. The UNC Carolina Alumni Review magazine featured Richards’s work in “Uncharted Waters, Uncharted Ground” (August 2020). Richards is currently a Photojournalism Fellow at Anderson Ranch in Aspen, Colorado (2021-present).