crap

This summer I visited Charleston, South Carolina

with my mom, sister, and boyfriend. 

This is an image I took on one of our tours of the city.
                                         

The brick walls in the foreground date back to before the Civil War. They blocked off the horse stables and the slave quarters from the rest of the property. I used proximity to draw the viewer's eye to them first, as I believe they are the most important part of the image. In an era of condos and vegan/gluten-free/peanut-free/farm raised cafés, it is nice to see a city that forces people to work around history instead of tearing it down. 

At first glance, it is hard to see the building behind the walls as it is covered by a tree. One might gloss over it entirely or maybe even assume that it is the original home of the people who owned this property in the 1800s. However, this home was built in 2019. The city of Charleston mandates that on the exterior, homes in their historical district reflect the period in which they were originally built. Although not visually, the house contrasts the other prominent features of the image, the tree and the brick walls, due to its age. As a lover of history and child of the 21st century, I appreciate how the people of Charleston preserve the past while not sacrificing modern conveniences. 

The repetition of the arches in the brick wall seem innocent at first. But as I mentioned earlier, they were the entrances to slave quarters and horse stables. This fact highlights how slaves were viewed as subhuman, of the same status as animals. It is vital to know our history so that we may never repeat it. 

The alignment of the tree and the house allow the tree to perfectly hide the house from view. While it looks like the tree (history) is hiding the house (the present), history actually provides more insight into the present and future as we can use it to study past actions and behaviors and analyze how that applies to the present.