In Charleston, the Spirit of Barbados
Above: a photo from the exhibition
By the Caribbean Journal staff
Charleston, South Carolina has long been among the most “Caribbean” cities in the United States.
The similarities between Charleston and islands like Barbados in architecture, food, dialect and social structure have long been apparent to scholars in both the United States and the Caribbean.
Today, they’re being explored further through a new photographic exhibition.
The exhibition, “The Spirit of Place: Traditions of the Agrarian Home in Barbados and the Low Country,” includes black and white platinum palladium prints from the book, “Barbados Chattel Houses,”
It was conceived by Professor Henry Fraser, Rhoda Green, a Bajan living in Charleston, along with Penny Hynam, former director of the Barbados National Trust and photographer Bob Kiss.
It’s being displayed in the two-story City Gallery in Charleston with curator Anne Quattlebaum, and features 20 Barbados chattel house prints by Kiss, along with photographs of indigenous houses by South Carolina photographers Julia Cart, Robert Yellin and Terry James.
Cart’s photos have been moved for inclusion in the Smithsonian’s new African American History Museum.
The exhibition continues during the MOJA Festival of the Arts in Charleston until Oct. 6.
