Vox Populi, Colorado County, TX.

A Freedom Colony Community

Vox Populi, meaning “voice of the people,” is a historic Freedom Colony in Colorado County, Texas, established by formerly enslaved individuals and their descendants following Emancipation. As part of my ancestral geography, this project centers Black spatial practice by examining how Black communities created place through land, built environments, kinship, labor, memory, and collective knowledge.

Through portraits, architectural forms, landscapes, family archives, and descendant-held knowledge, I investigate the establishment, maintenance, and ongoing interpretation of Vox Populi by its descendants. The contemporary photographs are created using the Platinum-Palladium process, a historic technique valued for its durability. I utilize this material permanence to critically examine systems that have historically failed to acknowledge these communities, while emphasizing the persistence of descendant knowledge across generations.

Photography functions as both a mode of critical inquiry and a form of preservation activism, offering visual representation to the “voice of the people” who continue to define the meaning of Vox Populi on their own terms, even as preservation systems classify it as a ghost town.