This wall installation, conceptualized by Juan Logan and Susan Harbage Page, juxtaposes paintings from the collection of the Gibbes Museum with photographic portraits by Page and a portrait painting by Logan, all in antique frames from the collection. Once grand, these aging portrait frames suggest the decaying porticoes of Charleston, now in the process of renovation.

Elegantly photographed in elite settings, Page's large portraits, printed on canvas to reflect painted portraits in the installation, depict contemporary Charlestonians with the names of planter families. Recalling the complex interfamily ties that link whites and blacks in South Carolina, these images suggest how slaves were identified by the patronyms of their "owners," some of whom fathered and enslaved mixed-race children. The serious poses chosen by the subjects (without prompting by the artist) resemble those in historic portraits, suggesting the power of art and visual culture in shaping self-presentation.

The carved thorns on the frame of Logan's Portrait of Denmark Vesey, formerly containing a painting of the head of Jesus Christ, address the suffering of this martyred leader of a foiled 1822 slave rebellion in Charleston. The blank frontal silhouette (also visible in Background Material and Welcome Home) stands in for the face of this free black, who was never respectfully depicted during his lifetime. A former slave, Vesey was a black carpenter and Methodist minister whose risking of his freedom and life in resisting the enslavement of others led to his torture and death. After Vesey's execution, and that of some thirty-five others, authorities suppressed all records of the event. Although black troops in the Civil War called Vesey's name as they entered into battle, only recently have scholars examined his biography in order to repudiate the paternalistic ideology of slavery that Sterling Stuckey ironically calls "kindhearted supervision." In its anonymity, Logan's silhouette also suggests the innumerable people who suffered under slavery, continue to suffer under economic apartheid, and have been obscured by racial stereotypes.