Visual Materiality and Silent Memories Searching for the Enslaved Victims in Plantation Spaces

Visual Materiality and Silent Memories provides a type of remembrance journey through plantation history to raise awareness of what is missing about the enslaved, and question what changes should be made in these spaces. Visual representations can memorialize, marginalize, or ignore victims of cultural oppression. By refocusing the history of plantations on the enslaved, with the visual disjoint between the resurrected plantation glory and the downplaying of the enslaved experience in plantation spaces, Susan Garza uncovers how the victimization of the enslaved has previously been absent from the conversation. The visual research in this text aims to look differently at spaces we may encounter every day and seek out what we are unaware is happening as a result of the design of visual spaces. Garza argues awareness of the silence of the victimization and how it can affect visitors is one way to build racial awareness. Memorial plantations have been called to reexamine deception through manipulation of events, as victimization has been basically written out of history through the visual focus in these spaces. This book is one answer to that call.