Carlos
Diaz

History, Memory, Myth: The Confederate Monument in the American South

No single phenomenon has had a more direct and impactful repercussion on the shaping of America's historical and contemporary conditions than race. For people of color, there is no experience without that single piece of reality. With this project, I question how race is intertwined with history, memory, myth, and how that manifest and is reconciled within a contemporary American experience.

This project, History, Memory, Myth: The Confederate Monument in the American South, represents an evolution of my long-term interest in representing the American landscape as a means of examining the perpetually shifting historical, cultural, and political facts and fictions of this country.

For many Confederate monuments, like silent sentinels, have guarded and symbolized a specific Southern ideology, but for many others these monuments shine like beacons of oppression, inequality, and hate. The Confederate monument is an overtly visible reminder for how the American consciousness has evolved.

Since the summer of 2017 when this project began, a seismic cultural shift has taken place in America, manifest in the protests, demonstrations, and weeks of marching in the streets. History will record the vile and inhumane act inflicted upon George Floyd, on May 25, 2020, as the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. In the minds and hearts of most Americans, the monuments are now collectively understood to symbolize systemic racism and have become surrogates for the very thing they represent.

My hope is that these photographs will present, at the very least, a context for the monuments, communicate a sense of what it was like to live in their presence and serve to document where we were in time, when we collectively made the decision to realize, for everyone, the ideals upon which this country was founded. After 40 years in the profession, I continue to struggle to discover, learn and understand more about the world in which I live and the nature of the human condition.