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Daufuskie Island
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JEANNE MOUTOUSSAMY-ASHE
25TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION
Original Foreword by ALEX HALEY
New Preface by DEBORAH WILLIS, Ph.D.
2008 Essence Literary Award for Photography
Daufuskie Island
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JEANNE MOUTOUSSAMY-ASHE
Twenty-five years ago, Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe found herself enraptured by the people of Daufuskie Island and recorded their lives through photography.
This anniversary edition of Daufuskie Island boldly contrasts the changes caused by economic growth, which occurred after land de-velopers began building expensive homes and hotels.
At the time of first publication, about eighty-five permanent residents of the island lived in fewer than fifty homes.
Many still spoke their native Gullah dialect.
This pocket of their culture was all that remained of a thriving antebellum black society built by freed slaves that purchased the land from the original plantation owners, who had left the island.
In order to create this expanded edition, Jeanne returned to the original contact sheets and discovered many over-looked photographs.
Now, twenty-five years later, this seasoned artist, with the benefit of distance and reflection, has perfectly interpreted an evanescent way of life, a world washed away by the ineluctable tides of time.
With 110 photographs, many never before published, Daufuskie Island is a clarion call to preserve the remnants of island life and the culture of the rural south.
"Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe's photographs of families and a community in South Carolina, known as Daufuskie Island, transforms our understanding of documentary photography.
The photographs in this book instill a sense of joy and dignity....
These photographs have a special connection to his-tory and memory-history of a place and the memory of the subjects documented." -Deborah Willis, Ph.D., from the preface
Daufuskie Island is published to accompany a traveling exhibition sponsored by Merrill Lynch.
From Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe web page:
In the many years since 1982, when I first published Daufuskie Island, A Photographic Essay with the University of South Carolina Press, my experiences in the Gullah community have remained a presence in my thoughts, even if quiescent in my work.
The Gullah Geechee people’s exceptional position in American history remains unaltered. The Low Country culture is singular in how it brings African traditions that came over with the slave trade together with a rather isolated American experience.
The Gullah language is one example of this synthesis. It mixes English and West African languages to create a new language distinctly separate from either parent language but bearing the mark of both. An additional example would be the prayer houses, the places of worship that mixed the christian religion imparted by slave masters and indigenous religious practices brought from Africa. The hybrid nature of the Daufuskie culture coupled with its seclusion as a black community makes it rather extraordinary. The sheer existence of a relatively independent southern African American community during the early 20th century earns it a hallowed place in American History.