Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe’s arresting photographs of Daufuskie Island, off the coast of South Carolina, document the lives of “Gullah-Geechee” African Americans living there in the 1970s, just before the tides of change swept over this once remote community.

Nearly three decades ago, photographer Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe took her camera to Daufuskie Island, and created a vivid portrait of a coastal community whose way of life and language, Gullah, is an enduring synthesis of African and American elements.

Gullah is the term long used to describe the creole language spoken, at its height, by approximately the half million Gullah-Geechee people of African descent on the Sea Islands and in the tidewater region of the South Atlantic coast. Gullah mixes English and West African languages creating a new language, distinctly separate from either parent language but bearing the mark of both. The term "Gullah" may be a corruption of "Angola," a major source of Africans brought to South Carolina, or to the Gola, a group of people from Liberia. "Geechee" is believed to be derived from the Ogeechee River and applies to Gullah-speakers who live along the Georgia coast.

Now, 25 years later, this rare community, whose families had lived in the islands off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia since before the civil war, has changed irrevocably. Moutoussamy-Ashe's photographs remind us of the deep contribution of people of African origin to American life; they delve deeply into an important aspect of American culture often missing from history books. The poignant images of Daufuskie Island capture a people and a place, then on the verge of dissolution and displacement, now preserved in memory and pictures.

Guest Curator: Deborah Willis, Ph.D., New York University

Organized by the Museum for African Art and presented September 28-November 25, 2007 at the World Financial Center Courtyard Gallery, New York, New York.

Co-presented with arts > World Financial Center. Sponsored by Merrill Lynch. With additional support provided with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.