FLORENCE – Hidden Space: Natchez Trace, an exhibit featuring work by photographer
Abraham Rowe, is open through Friday, October 14, at the Elaine Bailey Augustine Gallery, in the University of North Alabama’s Visual Arts Building, on Pine Street, Florence. There will be a gallery talk at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, September 27.
Admission is free. The gallery is open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Mondays through Fridays.
A partnership among Abraham Rowe Photography with the Muscle Shoals National Heritage Area and UNA’s public history department, Hidden Spaces began in 2017 to capture the stories of people, places and events across north Alabama through photography and oral histories.
This exhibit explores the Natchez Trace in its historic forms as the Old Natchez Trace and as the National Park Service’s Natchez Trace Parkway today, said Carrie Crawford, MSNHA director.
Zach Aaron, MSNHA consultant, and Clayton Davis, UNA public history graduate student and
MSNHA graduate assistant, researched sites, conducted and transcribed oral-history interviews and participated in fieldwork days focused on photographically documenting sites with Rowe.
“The Natchez Trace exhibit is what the Hidden Spaces team calls a ‘deep dive,’ which helps us to really understand the Trace’s role in our regional story,” said Brian Dempsey, director of the UNA Public History Center. “It also thoroughly visually documents the historic landscape in this moment in time. The story of the Natchez Trace will be added to the Hidden Spaces website and the physical images preserved as part of the Hidden Spaces collection.”
Crawford added that this project had another benefit.
“One of the most important thing Hidden Spaces has taught our team is the importance of discovery,” she said. “Go explore your own community. You never know what you might learn!”
For more information, visit the Hidden Spaces website at https://hiddenspaces.org/.
Media Release/Cathy Wood
MSNHA media coordinator
