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Linda Foard Roberts: Lament by Linda AlterwitzNovember 25, 2025

art; science; nature; technology; medical imaging

Lament by Linda Foard Roberts, Radius Books 2025

In Lament (Radius Books, 2025), Linda Foard Roberts reflects on the history and memory of the American South, where she was born and raised. Her photographs draw the viewer into both the past and present, revealing a landscape that has borne witness to a deeply troubled history. We see remnants of that past, structures that have fallen and others that still stand, plantations that once relied on enslaved labor. In her introductory essay, Roberts writes, “Markers of the past exist all around us, sometimes hidden but always detectable.”

The sense of lament is palpable throughout the work. It lingers in the trees, where gravity feels thick and heavy, pulling the Spanish moss downward. A raw juxtaposition is felt within these photographs—an undercurrent of sorrow and entrapment, countered by renewal and hope.

In Stairwell (First Floor), Mendenhall-Blair House, High Point, North Carolina, the holiday lights coiling around the banister evoke barbed wire, a delicate twist of pain intertwined with a nostalgic sense of memory. Yet amidst loss, symbols of hope emerge. The quiet majesty of Four Holes Swamp, Underground Railway, Harleyville, South Carolina speaks to regrowth and resilience.

A series of photographs of the Mendenhall-Blair House, a historical landmark still standing today in Highpoint, North Carolina, depicts a place that once offered refuge to those seeking freedom, its hidden doors and stairways testaments to courage and compassion.

Lament is a meditative two-volume book housed in a slipcase. The cover of the book is embossed with the etymology of the word ‘lament.’ To read these words, Roberts explains “…the book must be moved into the light, which is a metaphor for how these places of history exist all around us, but often it takes intention to truly see them.”

Lament by Linda Foard Roberts, Radius Books 2025

In 2016, I was finishing up my book, Passage, about life, love, family, and the sacredness of time. It was during this time that I was sitting in the balcony of a small church we had been attending with my family, when my son quietly and emotionally revealed we were sitting in the same balcony pews where the enslaved once sat. I was moved to tears. This was kind of a beginning for me.

In that moment, time collapsed, and the past became tangible. Feeling the social unrest in our country and the continued invisible barriers, my hope for healing became a driving force for this work. I was drawn by something greater than myself and decided to record these places of oppression as a way to invite a shared witnessing to this past. I felt compelled to add my voice to the chorus of all those who came before me. I hope that this open discussion and dialogue about our country’s deepest scars will facilitate cultural reform, healing, and new possibilities.

I have always believed that places and things hold memories, and it is up to us, as artists, to reveal what lies beneath the layers of time. This work took me places across the South to bear witness to our country’s deepest scars. The tangibility of these places of suffering, the evidence of tragedy manifested itself in the entangled, weeping earth, hanging moss, and resurrection fern covered limbs, worn hand posts, tired stairs, half-light windows, darkness, the presence of something here that beckons us, calls us to remember, to look, but not to just look, to see and feel. To feel, we must pull from the deepest part of our humanity, our hearts, and this becomes the anchor to which we can better understand the stories being told by these places and spaces. Within this physicality, our hearts and minds are invited to connect.

What I didn’t know when I began this journey was my own connection to the history of enslavement, and that the people I would be honoring would have once been held by my own ancestors. I am still sitting with this awareness. I have stepped back and then forward again from this work, and I thought of the words of Thomas Wolfe from Look Homeward Angel, “Each of us is all the sums he has not counted.”

My book, Lament, pulls from our deepest connection to humanity, reminding us that we are all woven into the social fabric of time, history, and life together, and that we must examine our shared past. This work connects the tangibility of history and the geography of memory to foster a deeper understanding of the palpable presence of the interconnected past in everyday life.

Bryan Stevenson’s grandmother said to him, “Bryan, you can’t understand the most important things from a distance; you have to get close.” These words have guided me throughout this journey. Healing requires an understanding upheld by closeness.

For this work, I used an 8” x 10” view camera with a Darlot Brass Barrel lens from the 1800s. The lens allowed me to look back in time at these historical places, in the present time and place, and to see the overlap between evidence of our past and the present. There are no shutter speeds or f-stops on this lens, which allowed me to be fully present and in the moment, taking the lens cap off for exposures and leaving an element of chance in my work.

Art is meant to move us, to help us think, to encourage us to act, and to help us better understand the universality of humanity within all of us; it brings us closer together. I see my efforts as a contribution to a legacy of truth-seeking that began long before I started this project and will continue long after. I hope this work will advance ongoing efforts to make a sometimes seemingly ineffable history tangible. I have seen how such efforts create opportunities for change, for both compassion and action. This work is not only a document of our past but a metaphor for our present, expressing a need for renewed compassion, repair, and change. Consider it an invitation. It is up to all of us to inspire change.

This project was only possible through the collective counsel, support, guidance, and generosity of spirit of many, many people. I am so very fortunate to have immensely generous and talented contributors. I am deeply grateful to all the writers and contributors whose powerful words express what a photograph sometimes cannot convey. The book includes essays by Jennifer Sudul Edwards, Ph.D., Chief Curator and Curator of Contemporary Art, The Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC; Cheryl Finley, Ph.D., historian, author, curator and critic; Michelle Lanier, Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, and Afterword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Ph.D., professor, literary critic, historian, and filmmaker, and a poem written for the work by Eugene Ethelbert Miller, poet, teacher, literary activist.

A defining moment in this project is when writer and folklorist Michelle Lanier and I visited the church where the work began. We spent time here at the burial site for enslaved laborers. She powerfully and beautifully greeted the land with prayer and song. We later sat together in the same balcony pews where this work was born. In that moment, and even now, we share an unflinching commitment to justice. Michelle’s poem in Lament was written after this experience. Her words capture what the images cannot.

I am also fortunate to have worked with the immensely talented designer and publisher, David Chickey of Radius Books, and editor Nick Larson.

Lament by Linda Foard Roberts, Radius Books 2025

Linda Foard Roberts‘ (b. American, 1961) work is deeply personal, rooted in memory, family, and local histories, combined with philosophical inquiries about life, death, and basic human rights. Over the years, her projects have been mined from her personal connection to nature, humanity, and family. Using 8″ x 10″ and 5″ x 7″ cameras and preferring the imperfections of old lenses and the untold history within them, her work is metaphorical and layered, intending to cross language and cultural barriers. Roberts is a recipient of a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2009 North Carolina Artist Fellowship.

Roberts’s new book, Lament, published by Radius Books, was recently released. Lament is designed in two volumes housed in a cloth-covered slipcase. The first volume focuses on her images, while the second volume comprises texts by scholars Jennifer Sudul Edwards, Ph.D., Chief Curator and Curator of Contemporary Art, The Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina; Cheryl Finley, Ph.D., historian, author, curator, and critic; Michelle Lanier, professor at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University; and an afterword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Ph.D., professor, literary critic, historian, and filmmaker; and a poem written for the series by Eugene Ethelbert Miller, poet, teacher, literary activist.

In 2016, Roberts completed her first monograph, Passage, published by Radius Books, debuting at Paris Photo with signings at AIPAD in New York and Hauser and Wirth. This five-chapter book weaves together images and writing that explore the inevitable movement of time in life, which connects us all as human beings. Accompanying the images are essays by Deborah Willis, Ph.D., Chair Tisch School of the Arts, and Russell Lord, Curator of Photographs at The New Orleans Museum of Art, and paired quotes consented by Sally Mann and Emmet Gowin, and a poem by Billy Collins. Inspired by Wabi-sabi, the Japanese word for finding beauty in imperfection, her work focuses on memory and the acceptance of our impermanence.

Roberts’ work contemplates the roots we forge, connecting us with the smallness and the significance of an individual’s human life. Posing the environment as a reflection of ourselves, her photographs engage the transformative cycles that shape our lives, bound by time and what it means to be human, a foundation upon which we can all find common ground.

Her work has been exhibited across the United States and internationally, at venues in Australia, Guatemala, Argentina, and Germany. Roberts is a recipient of a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship in support of her project Lament. She is represented by SOCO Gallery in North Carolina and Sol del RIO in Guatemala. Roberts lives and works in Charlotte, North Carolina. Collections include permanent collections of The Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, Charlotte, NC, The Columbus Museum, Columbus, GA, The Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ, Davidson College, Davidson, NC, the Harry Ransom Center, Austin, TX, The Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, NC, Museum of Photographic Arts San Diego, San Diego, CA, New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA, Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC, and The Ogden Museum of Art. New Orleans, LA. Corporate Collections include Bank of America, Fidelity Bank, King and Spalding, Lending Tree, Lincoln Harris, The Ritz Carleton, and the Symrise Group, formerly Haarmann and Reimer.

Roberts is represented by SOCO Gallery in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Sol del Rio in Guatemala City, Guatemala. Roberts lives and works in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Linda Alterwitz is an independent interdisciplinary artist with a focus on photography. Her work homes in on visualizing unseen systems that shape our world, encouraging dialogue around choice, trust, and collective experience. She has been an editor for Lenscratch Magazine since 2015 and is currently the Art + Science editor.

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Tags: Communities, Community, Conflict, Culture, Historical Processes, History, Linda Foard Roberts, Memory, Photography Book, Photography Books