BEAR ME INTO FREEDOM

McGuiness’ photographic essay pairs images with Frederick Douglass’ recollections of his childhood years as an enslaved person.

Abolitionist and civil rights icon Frederick Douglass had a gift for writing lyrically about the environment of Maryland’s Eastern Shore, where he grew up as an enslaved person: As he wrote in his memoir My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), “The broad bay opened up like a shoreless ocean on my boyish vision, filling me with wonder and admiration.” In this compelling work, the author uses his own images to visually complement Douglass’ prose, evoking the timelessness and austere beauty of the Talbot County countryside. McGuiness intends the images to establish “a connection between [Douglass’] words and the place that gave rise to a narrative that fundamentally altered the social and political landscape of 19th century America, one rooted in the water, fields, forests, wetlands, and towns of Maryland’s tidewater.” The book traces Douglass’ life through his birth on a farm overlooking Tuckahoe Creek in 1818 to his escape from slavery in 1838, with the author providing clear, concise commentary at the beginning of each section. Much of the area now bears little resemblance to how it existed in the 19th century, but McGuiness argues, “enough remains to hint at what the fields, paths, buildings, forests, and waterways of Douglass’ youth may have looked like during the decades he lived here.” The high-contrast black-and-white images match the quotations from Douglass’ works seamlessly: The “wild and desolate aspect” of Douglass’ home on a Tilghman Island tenant farm is illustrated by an image of storm clouds over the roiling waters of Chesapeake Bay, while a simple image of gum shoots accompanies Douglass’ chilling description of being beaten by the farm’s brutal tenant with “heavy goads” from a gum tree. A few of the photos suffer from being underexposed, but McGuiness succeeds admirably in his stated goal of visually representing the “physical surroundings that shaped [Douglass’] perceptions during those ten years in Talbot County.”

An evocative photographic portrait of Douglass’ childhood environs.