December 10, 2004:
"I spent my day in a cotton field today taking pictures at Singleton Plantation, the home of former chair of the SC Ways and Means Committee, Othniel Wienges. As I was crossing over rows of harvested cotton, dipping in and out of waist high plant branches, I went to kneel down to get eye level with the cotton…And then a strange peace came over me. I kneeled down and the dry, cracked soil suddenly felt like a feather pillow. When my body came in contact with the soil and it was as if I kneeled down at the birthplace of where it all began. The start of what we now know as the African-American generation began in a humble place like the cotton fields of where the great Greats of our Grandmothers worked. Who could have the strength to give birth to a child only to rise from one labor and get waist deep in another?!? As an African-American, and as a woman I knelt before the unacknowledged American monument and felt unworthy to even take its picture." |
"The most memorable shoot for me was the day of a really bad storm. The storm was lingering, but never surfaced yet. We went to Ms. Missy’s house to pick her up because she was going to show us the graveyard where her entire family was buried. When we arrived at her house she said the weather was too bad and she was not coming out. We were disappointed, but asked her if we could still go to the graveyard and film without her. With her permission, we headed toward the graveyard. Not two minutes after we arrived, we saw her car flying around the corner. She had changed her mind! The graveyard shoot was successful and is included in the final film." |
