LENSCRATCH

Tree Week: Jamie V. Robertson: In Search of Osman’s Ghost by Sarah Hood SalomonOctober 21, 2026

©Jamie V. Robertson, Osman in the Swamp Archival Inkjet Print 18 x 24 inches 2024

I met Jamie V. Robertson at the FotoFest reviews in Houston, and was immediately struck by the quiet strength of her images of southern swamplands. The pictures are taken with Infrared film, which makes the tree foliage seem luminescent. This haunting effect is tied into her exploration of the maroon colonies of runaway slaves that lived deep in the swamp. The farther in the escapees went, the less likely it was that the slave catchers would follow you. Robertson skillfully adds historical drawings of runaways to her images to help the viewer visualize the terror those people felt.

©Jamie V. Robertson,Spirited Away Archival Inkjet Print 18 x 24 inches 2024

In Search of Osman’s Ghost

In Search of Osman’s Ghost is a photographic series that explores the connection between humanity and nature by illuminating maroonage in the Southern Swamplands. Informed by the literary works of Toni Morrison, bell hooks, Lucille Clifton, and Édouard Glissant, the Southern Swamp is reframed as a living collaborator for runaway slaves in colonial America. Its ‘rememory’ of maroons, self-liberated formerly enslaved people who lived on the fringes of colonial America, is explored through black and white infrared photography and archival illustrations. Infrared film, which has applications in science, medicine, and paranormal studies, captures images outside of the visible light spectrum, giving a surreal and otherworldly experience of the environment. Can a swamp dream? What or who does it dream of? Does it remember its brief alliance with those seeking freedom? The surrealist nature of infrared images allows for the exploration of memory in the landscape. The Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia, the Everglades in Florida, and the Bas Du Fleuve of New Orleans were sites of maroonage where Africans and African Americans made their dream of freedom a reality. This series looks at the Swamp, the maroons, and how their alliance defied colonial standards of living. In Search of Osman’s Ghost invites the viewer to explore this counternarrative of America’s history to consider their own relationship to the natural world.

©Jamie V. Robertson, A Place To Steal Oneself Away II Inkjet Print 72 x 46 inches 2025

Jamie V. Robertson (B. 1988 American) is a visual artist and educator working in photography and video. Born and raised in Houston, her Texas roots inform her practice as she examines the environment of the American South and its relationship to Black counter-narratives. Through research, writing, photography, and video art, her work excavates a history of Black defiance, contending with the vilified and monolithic narrative of the Southern United States. Deeply influenced by the works of Toni Morrison, bell hooks, and Lucile Clifton, her creative practice embraces a Black Feminist Hauntology, a framework that acknowledges the spectral presence in Southern land through untold histories. Her approach to image-making fluidly oscillates between analog and digital processes, with an emphasis on black and white infrared film. Robertson utilizes text, archival images, and found imagery as materials and companions to her work to oppose the hierarchy of high and low culture.

Jamie earned an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Houston and an MS in Art Therapy from Florida State University. Robertson is an Assistant Professor at Old Dominion University and works between Texas and Virginia. Currently, her research explores the Great Dismal Swamp and maroonage.

©Jamie V. Robertson, The Runaway Archival Inkjet Print 18 x 24 inches 2024

Can you tell me what drew you to photograph this project, and how you felt when you were doing it.

I have always had an interest in the natural world and its intersection with Black History. My early work dealt with my family’s history and relationship to the Texas Freedom Colony, Egypt Community, outside of Centerville, TX. My family has held land there since emancipation. The term “Freedom Colony” comes from the work of Dr. Andrea Roberts at UVA. In hindsight the move into marronage in North America feels like a natural shift. There is a lot of overlap between maroon colonies and freedom colonies. I have always known about maroons in other parts of the Americas like Jamaica, Brazil and Colombia but I had never heard them mentioned in the United States. It was a podcast episode with historian Marcus Nevis, on his book, City of Refuge, that really piqued my interest. As I began to do more research I became excited by this history of rebellion and resistance.

©Jamie V. Robertson, A Place To Steal Oneself Away III Inkjet Print 72 x 46 inches 2025

Who was Osman, and was he a real person who was related to you?

This series is a move away from my family history work and the beginnings of looking at collective histories. Osman was a real person who lived in the Great Dismal Swamp. The only details we have of him come from David Hunter Strother in 1856 who was traveling through the swamp after a visit to an enslaved workers’ camp. He sees Osman briefly in the thicket of the swamp armed with a rifle. And just like a figment of the imagination, he was gone. Osman was a maroon but colonial society would have probably referred to him as a fugitive or runaway. Maroons were people who ran away from slavery and built autonomous communities in the hinterlands. In Jamaica, they lived in the mountains, in the U.S. , the Swamp was the primary location. These communities were difficult for colonial authorities to reach on purpose. Outside New Orleans, which I am hoping to photograph in the near future, St. Jean Malo, a maroon leader, had signs posted with warnings informing trespassers they were entering maroon territory.

©Jamie V. Robertson, Kudzu and Clouds Archival Inkjet Print 18 x 24 inches 2025

How did you first find out about the maroon people and the slaves who escaped to freedom in the swamps?

I’m not really sure when I first learned of maroons. I knew Black enclaves of resistance existed throughout the Americas. However, these were things I learned outside of the academic environment. The nuance of the lives of Black people during slavery is always missing from K-12 education. For instance, the lives of enslaved people in cities like Norfolk and New Orleans were very different from those who were enslaved on the plantations in the Sea Islands. Enslaved people in cities worked in various trades and often moved about the city unsupervised versus those who worked in the fields were under constant surveillance by an overseer.That specificity is worth noting. Maroonage is a byproduct of the system of slavery and essential to understanding that time period as well as the fact that Black people resisted slavery.

©Jamie V. Robertson, An Obscure Place To Hide 18 x 24 inches Archival Inkjet Print 2024

It must have been very difficult living conditions, with constant fear of being captured. Do you know what happened to them?

The swamp absolutely has its dangers. In the Life of Moses Grandy, he talks about escaping to the Great Dismal Swamp. One night while sleeping he felt the wet nose of some animal sniffing him. Moses eventually escaped North and was more or less passing through the swamp. Historians called this Petit Marronage because people’s stay was short term. As for the people who really lived there, we really don’t know what they thought of the environment other than it was a fantastic place to hide because all these dangers protected them from slave catchers who really didn’t want to venture deep into that terrain. One historian, Ryne Beddard, suggests that some of the first Africans who escaped into the swamp more than likely saw it as a sacred place because of their own cultural cosmologies. I like this reading the best because we tend to think about history from our position in the present and this reading honors what would have been the interior culture of enslaved people. As for what happened to maroons, it varies. In Jamaica , they still live in the mountains until this day. As for the United States, I would imagine that some mixed in with various indigenous people and maybe others came out of the swamp after emancipation.

©Jamie V. Robertson, Beware the Hounds 18 x 24 inches Archival Inkjet Print 2026

How do your images allude to the people and natural environment?

My series, In Search of Osman’s Ghost, uses black and white infrared photographs of southern swamplands and archival illustrations of maroons, runaways and resistance leaders to make visible the historic alliance between Black Americans and the natural world. Infrared film, which has applications in science, medicine, and paranormal studies, captures images outside of the visible light spectrum, giving a surreal and otherworldly experience of the environment. My process is two-fold. I spend time photographing historic wetland environments with black and white infrared film. As of late, I have started looking at expired rolls of films like Efke IR 820 and Macophot because they go deeper into the electromagnetic spectrum than the newer stocks. The images can range from soft to sharp depending on the brand and film size.The second part involves researching digital archives for images of maroons, runaways and fugitives. Maroons materialize in these images through the use of Photoshop. Conceptually, I have begun to think about these images as surreal. D. Scot Miller’s 2009 manifesto titled, ‘Call it Afro-Surreal’ really resonated with me. He states,“Afro-Surreal presupposes that beyond this visible world, there is an invisible world striving to manifest, and it is our job to uncover it. Like the African Surrealists, Afro-Surrealists recognize that nature (including human nature) generates more surreal experiences than any other process could hope to produce.”These sentiments along with the writings of Toni Morrison and bell hooks inform my framework of living memory in the landscape.

©Jamie V. Robertson, An Obscure Place To Hide II 18 x 24 inches Archival Inkjet Print 2026

I’d like to know what it was like to work in the swamp? Did you have issues with your equipment? Did you photograph from a boat or from the shore?

I really enjoy being out in the swamp. I photograph primarily in Virginia, Texas and Louisiana. I’m hoping to hit more Southern states in the coming years. In spite of the general term, ‘swamp’, they all feel different. The Great Dismal Swamp is very still and there are parts that don’t feel much like a traditional swamp at all. In Texas, I primarily focus on the bayous. In Houston alone the bayous range from heavily polluted ( like the one I grew up by) to wild. I often make my photographs from the shoreline or the side of the road. Sometimes, I lower my POV to imply being on the water. But also wetlands are low-lying areas. Some of the best things are happening pretty low to the ground. I haven’t had many issues with equipment other than an shutter release breaking or wishing that I had brought more film. As for wildlife, I have yet to see a snake, alligator or bear (knock on wood) but there are lots of insects, turtles and aquatic mammals like otters.The mosquitos can be brutal so I always carry insect repellent. I don’t feel afraid being out there even when I am alone because a lot of my experience is mediated by being on trails or walking over a cypress swamp via a boardwalk. It’s not hard to use your imagination about how the place would look without so much human intervention.