Ghosts of Segregation

Richard Frishman's photographs explore how the built environment reveals our cultural histories. In 2021 Frishman was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for photography. His current documentary project, Ghosts of Segregation, explores the vestiges of racial oppression in the landscape of the United States.Frishman's photography is included in a wide range collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, and the OAS Art Museum of the Americas. His work has garnered numerous awards, including the 2019 Review Santa Fe Curator's Choice Award (juror: Makeda Best), the 2019 PhotoNOLA Portfolio Award, two Sony World Photography Awards (2018), a Communication Arts Photography Award (2018), and a Photo District News Photo Annual Award (2018). In 1983, he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in feature photography. He lectures around the United States about the intersection of the designed environment, history, and social issues.

"Seven years ago, Richard Frishman embarked on a 25,000-mile journey in his car that took him from his home state of Washington to Maine, from Mississippi to Michigan. The photographs he took along the way--in major cities, backwater towns and in the countryside--capture structures and landscapes that speak to America's history of racial oppression. Frishman's goal in documenting these places and sites was to heighten awareness, motivate action and spark an honest conversation about the legacy of racial injustice in America today. As he assembled his work, and wrote detailed captions that tell the fascinating and often horrifying stories behind the photographs, he recognized that combining forces with a writer who could imbue the book with a personal touch would add an even deeper dimension. Hence, each section of the book opens with an essay by noted sociologist and Mississippi-native B. Brian Foster that eloquently speaks to the memories, the history and the ongoing struggles of Black people in the United States. Within this collection, readers will witness a history of white supremacist violence and institutional racism. A history of segregated bathrooms, beaches, churches, dining areas, doors, hospitals, hotels, waiting rooms, and water. But there are histories of Black aliveness here too. Histories of Black migration, Black entrepreneurship, Black pleasure and play, Black protest and organizing, Black singing and dancing, and Black placemaking. This remarkable book brings home a powerful truth: these ghosts of segregation haunt us because they are very much alive. The stories and photographs in this book seek to preserve the evidence of our nation's sins. When these telling traces are erased, the lessons they contain are easily denied and forgotten. Particularly by those who seek to deny and forget"