Research Artist: James Allen "Without Sanctuary"

It is impossible for me to introduce the Shockoe Valley images that I have been working on without referencing one book and the profound effect it has had on me as both an artist and an American. James Allen's "Without Sanctuary", is a pictorial history of lynchings in America. Allen was not an artist but an antique dealer who began finding postcards that glorified photographs of lynchings in his travels. He had the foresight to realize that although lynching was a huge epidemic in American history it is rarely taught or spoken about. The postcards would turn up in estates sometimes and then he became braver and began asking around for them. He explains in the forward that people were reluctant to admit when they procured such objects and reluctant also to let go of them. They may have been a family's shame or thier prized possession. Eventually Allen had amassed a large enough collection to publish his book. I have always been enamored with both old and found photographs. It is difficult for me to imagine what I would do if I just happened to come across an image of this nature. After the initial shock, I believe that my first instict would be to donate the piece to a museum for preservation. I respect James Allen for realizing the importance of preservation and in doing so taking on the huge responsibility of trying to expose the truth about American history. When the book first came out a few years ago it was all over the news. My mother is a history buff and wanted it for her birthday. I remember buying it for her and looking through it after she had opened her gifts. I have always been hypersensitive to images like these and put the book down for fear of having the pictures stuck in my head later. After a while all of the poor tortured bodies start to look the same, but what is equally as haunting are the gleaming faces of men in the crowds that circle below. These pictures bear witness to a holocoust that happened on our own soil just twenty or thirty years before we sent our troops overseas to stop the exact same kind of genocide in Europe.