“Exploration is one of my favorite aspects of photography. The camera feels like a gateway to the world, allowing you to observe and discover new lands. That’s how things began for photographer and historian, Ginna Richards, who embarked on a long term project that uncovered things most of us never knew existed.”

Read the feature here.

“Along the Lowcountry’s Inner Passage, they steered south by starlight as slave catchers pursued them toward Spanish Florida. This Juneteenth, their names should not be forgotten.”

Read the article here.

“I didn’t intend to spend ten years searching for one man’s name. My obsession began in a tidal creek where I went to swim in South Carolina. It was the summer I was pregnant with my fourth child and I longed for a quiet escape from Charleston’s tourist-swarmed streets…”

Read the story here.

“Author Virginia Richards discusses a southern waterway that the enslaved were forced to build for mercantile shipping, but which they used as a covert route to freedom.”

Watch Live at 9:35 AM CST
June 21, 2026 on C-SPAN 2

Hear from author Virginia McGee Richards about a canal path from Charleston to St. Augustine used to escape slavery.

Watch the video here.

“About a decade ago, Richards—who grew up in Charlotte and lives there still—was swimming in a South Carolina creek when she was struck with a question: How did this channel come to be?”

Read the story here.

“In an interview — edited for length and clarity — Richards discusses the origins of her project; the slow, tactile nature of her photographic process; and America’s “tendency to ignore the importance of Black labor to the infrastructure of our entire country.”

Read the interview here.

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCBD) – Tonight, we are excited to welcome author Virginia Richards, who will discuss her new book about the waterway built by enslaved people, and its connection to Charleston all the way to St. Augustine.

Watch the interview to learn about Richards and her new book.

The Inner Passage photographs.
Event sponsored by The New York Times and Photoville.

“Making brilliant use of an old photographic process, Virginia Richards has soulfully summoned a heartrending past. What a vital and astonishing book! Through landscape and portraiture, it speaks, and haunts, and sings.”

—Robin Kelsey, author of 
Photography and the Art of Chance

Learn more about the book
Pre-order the book at MIT Press

The Inner Lens Issue #1, February 2026

Feature story on The Inner Passage, read the story here.

In March of 2023, the American Society of Magazine Editors awarded Ginna’s Inner Passage photographs a National Ellie award for best photographic feature story published in 2022.

“History is today, in Virginia Richards’ wet plate collodion prints. Dripping trees and fading grave markers speak of a tragic past, when enslaved people were forced to dig the Inner Passage, a waterway from South Carolina to Florida. These sad, eerie photographs show viewers ancient oaks, or “witness trees” that “witnessed” historic events, and a “burnt church” that is hundreds of years old.”

October, 2022:
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, North Carolina, Revēlō: Second Annual Plein Air Exhibition (Juried Competition)

Works:
“Vennie Deas Moore, historian and native of South Carolina”
”Witness Tree on the Wadmalaw”

In August of 2022, the UNC Carolina Alumni Review magazine wrote about Ginna’s documentary photography and her historical research on Lowcountry waterways and landscapes.

In March 2022, Virginia’s photographs and historical research on the Inner Passage was published as a feature article in the Smithsonian Magazine.

Read the Smithsonian piece “What the Haunting ‘Inner Passage’ Represented to the Enslaved”.