ASU Herberger College School of Art Faculty Exhibition

October 18, 2008 – January 25, 2009
Opening Reception: Friday, October 17, 7-9 p.m.

Stephen Marc, Professor, Photography

Untitled, 2007
Digital montage / archival pigment inkjet, 22.5 x 37.5”
Courtesy of the artist

I am a photographer/ digital montage artist whose work explores the African Diaspora. For the last eight years I have been documenting the Underground Railroad, building images that individually describe these historic sites inside and out. In order to tell this story more completely, I began a companion series that address the larger institution of slavery. These montages metaphorically weave together remnants of slavery including plantation structures, documents and artifacts; with other Black historical and contemporary cultural references.

In the montage submitted for this exhibition, a field in Southern Illinois provides the backdrop for a Virginia slave auction etching from an 1861 The Illustrated London News (courtesy of Jerry Gore). Also included are an Aunt Jemima’s Pancake Flour (The Davis Milling Company) ad from the October 1910 The Ladies Home Journal; a “Negroes For Sale” ad from an 1829 Richmond (VA) Enquirer and sections of New Bedford’s (MA) 1858 Evening Standard newspapers, a “High Price of Negroes” reprint from the Huntsville (AL) Democrat and an article entitled “To the Benevolent”. In this article, a man is requesting work for hire in order to raise the funds to purchase his wife before her owner raised the price. (2007)

More information: John Spiak, spiak@asu.edu.

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