Press

  • Conscientious Photography Magazine, “The Inner Passage”

    “My first exposure to the idea that the land was not merely some immutable background people were operating against came from the very place I grew up in: the part of the city where I was born had been wrested (“reclaimed”) from the sea.”

    Read the story here.

  • ARTDOC Photography Magazine, “Hidden Waterways of the American South”

    The Inner Lens Issue #1, February 2026

    Feature story on The Inner Passage

  • Ginna’s work published at the Smithsonian Magazine

    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”.

  • ‘Inner Passage’ received a National Ellie award for best photographic feature story

    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.

  • UNC Alumni Magazine Feature Article about The Inner Passage

    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.

Updates

  • 2026 New York Portfolio Review

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

  • MIT Press to publish ‘The Inner Passage: An Untold Story of Black Resistance Along a Southern Waterway’ in April 2026

    “Virginia McGee Richards’ breathtaking photographs visualize histories of Black resistance and resilience, while transcending time and powerfully reminding us that the past is an indelible part of the present.”

    —Steven Nelson, coeditor, 
    Black Modernisms in the Transatlantic World

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

  • Two images chosen for the Second Annual Plein Air Exhibition (Juried Competition) at North Carolina Museum of Art

    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”

  • 2022 Gold Medal Prize, Lowell Thomas Competition, for photographs from The Inner Passage series that were published in in Smithsonian Magazine.

    “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.”