Finding Freedom in the Parting of the WaysMain MenuThe Parting of the WaysIntroductionPaths by Julie ShaferJulie Shafer essayDiverging Paths Audio GalleryDenise Johnson Interviews Julie Shafer Pt. 1Works CitedInformation pageBiographiesInformation pageGratitudeAcknowledgementsDenise M. Johnson4ac969f411f8ab69a8061d019e5b50c846dc43d8
Julie Shafer, Fort Laramie, 2018
1media/julieshafer_ftlaramie_2018_thumb.jpg2020-05-01T03:21:07+00:00Denise M. Johnson4ac969f411f8ab69a8061d019e5b50c846dc43d83371Silver Gelatin photograph, 15 X 24 inchesplain2020-05-01T03:21:07+00:00Denise M. Johnson4ac969f411f8ab69a8061d019e5b50c846dc43d8
12020-04-23T04:36:27+00:00Mneumonic Traces3Denise Johnson essayplain2020-05-18T17:13:26+00:00As Saidiya Hartman intones in Lose Your Mother: A Journey along the Atlantic Slave Route, Shafer’s photos are shaped by the mnemonic traces indicating the “strivings and failures” of Americans simultaneously seeking freedom as they built the very idea of what freedom could be. In the sites that Shafer photographs–ruts in the road, names carved on cliff sides, and the ruins of dwellings–the viewer finds time compressed and space expanded, becoming as much a witnesses to the past that was chosen, as the dreamer who having confronted “the terrible things we hope[d] to avoid,” looks ahead to “conceive of a new order.”
