Photographer Uncovers Hidden History of Black Resistance Along Southern Waterways

Virginia McGee Richards' project "The Inner Passage" illuminates a 300-mile network of colonial-era canals dug by enslaved people that later became covert routes to freedom.

Published on Feb. 23, 2026

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Charleston-based photographer Virginia McGee Richards has published a groundbreaking photographic and historical project with MIT Press called "The Inner Passage: An Untold Story of Black Resistance Along a Southern Waterway." The work uncovers a little-known chapter of American history, revealing a 300-mile network of colonial-era canals - called 'cuts' - dug by enslaved people between the 17th and 18th centuries along the Atlantic coastline from Charleston, South Carolina to St. Augustine, Florida. These waterways, built through immense labor and environmental transformation, later became covert routes to freedom, offering thousands of enslaved people safer and faster passage than overland paths.

Why it matters

Richards' project illuminates this hidden history, bringing to life landscapes that have long been overlooked in official archives. The project merges rigorous technical craftsmanship with contemporary documentary sensibilities, presenting a fresh lens through which to view America's intertwined histories of oppression, survival, and the natural environment.

The details

Over the past decade, Richards has documented these canals, rivers, and surrounding environments using a wooden large-format camera and the 19th-century wet plate collodion process. This analogue technique, with its alchemical unpredictability, mirrors the shifting, fluid nature of the waterways themselves. The project also includes aerial plates of the Stono River, created by translating digital images into collodion to maintain the series' visual coherence.

  • The Inner Passage project was published by MIT Press in April 2026.
  • Richards has been documenting the canals, rivers, and surrounding environments over the past decade, since around 2016.

The players

Virginia McGee Richards

A photographer, researcher, and former environmental lawyer whose work explores landscape as a living archive. She is the creator of the photographic project "The Inner Passage."

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What they’re saying

“Landscapes are like manuscripts. They record, they hold, and they can render histories—even in the absence of documents.”

— Virginia McGee Richards, Photographer (all-about-photo.com)

What’s next

The Inner Passage project is expected to continue generating interest and awareness around this hidden history of Black resistance and resilience along the Southern waterways.

The takeaway

Through her meticulous photographic work, Virginia McGee Richards has uncovered a powerful and overlooked chapter of American history, shedding new light on the ingenuity and determination of enslaved people who used these covert waterways as routes to freedom.