The Emergent Clock – Time & Labor is a series of nine platinum palladium photographic prints examining time, space, and the role of bells within plantation landscapes in the rural U.S. South. Informed by research visits to plantations across Texas and Louisiana, the series explores how bells structured the lives of the enslaved, enforcing a rhythm from “can’t see to can’t see,” before sunrise to after sunset and spanning the lives of the enslaved from birth to death. Inspired by Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech, specifically his call to “let freedom ring,” the work contrasts the plantation bells’ historical function as tools of control with the freedom King envisioned.
Using platinum palladium, known for its archival permanence, the series draws a connection between the durability of these materials and the long-lasting influence of plantation economies that fueled the global cotton trade, shaping capital flows that endure today. Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, a hallmark of modern industrial innovation, intensified cotton production, driving Northern foundries to produce the bells and machinery essential to plantation operations. In turn, this early industrial expansion embedded the exploitation of enslaved labor within global capital networks, linking past labor systems to modern economic foundations.
