Event Details

The City of Charleston Office of Cultural Affairs presents two photography exhibitions that examine personal and cultural histories of the Lowcountry. Calling Me Home: A Visual Ode to the Low-Country by Marcus Middleton and Children of Indigo by Caroline Gutman will be exhibited at City Gallery December 13, 2024, through February 9, 2025. Children of Indigo is a documentary project that explores the plant’s painful history in South Carolina and spotlights women in the Lowcountry today who have revived indigo cultivation and dyeing, building a flourishing community of textile artists and homesteaders. Calling Me Home: A Visual Ode to the Low-Country is a tribute to Wadmalaw Island and its environs. City Gallery will hold an opening reception for both exhibitions on Friday, December 13 from 5-7pm. An artist’s talk with Marcus Middleton will be held on Sunday, February 9 at 2pm. An artist’s talk with Caroline Gutman will be held on January 25 at 2pm. All events are free and open to the public.

Calling Me Home: A Visual Ode to the Low-Country is photographer Marcus Middleton’s tribute to Wadmalaw Island, or what he likes to call a “living museum.” “The American South is both turbulent and beautiful, and my hope is to share that dynamic and sometimes contradictory experience with the audience; to capture Wadmalaw as it is, unspoiled by progress,” says Middleton. “Crossing over Esau Jenkins Bridge is like going back in time. And I believe that nostalgia is medicinal. Whenever I return home, I feel recharged and refreshed. It’s the little things, right? I live in a big city, but low-country living is a part of my culture. This body of work is an attempt to express the gratitude I feel for where I grew up. I will forever be enamored with this place I call home.” Middleton’s visual tribute to his home includes more than 100 images.

In Children of Indigo, Caroline Gutman (b. 1987) explores how the commodity and its dye fueled slavery in the American colonies. Her body of work shows the remaining historical sites in contrast with contemporary textile artists and farmers confronting indigo’s difficult past and reclaiming it. Like cotton, indigo carries inseparable links to centuries of American chattel slavery. Today, women in the Lowcountry have revived indigo cultivation and dyeing, building diverse communities of textile artists and farmers. “Indigo is the voice of our ancestors,” textile artist Arianne King Comer has said. National presentation of the Children of Indigo project, exhibition, artist tour, and panel discussion has been supported by the Pulitzer Center.