Free Admission
South Carolina has the largest undeveloped coastal area in the continental US. It is uniquely and stunningly beautiful. How do we prepare for the future and ensure a functioning world for our children? J Henry Fair is a photographer and filmmaker whose exhibit, Picturing Freedom: Harriet Tubman and the Combahee River Raid, shows at the Gibbes Museum of Art during Spoleto and into the fall. It links the history and beauty of this special place.
Sierra Club is the oldest and largest grassroots environmental organization in the US. The local Robert Lunz Group has 1,200 members in Berkeley, Charleston, Colleton, and Dorchester counties in South Carolina. Sierra Club motto: Explore, enjoy and protect the planet.

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Museum opens 10AM. There will be a panel discussion at 1:30 with The Curator and the artists: Edda Fields-Black, Stephen Towns, and J Henry Fair.

This exhibition is inspired by the untold story of the Combahee River Raid from the perspective of Harriet Tubman and the enslaved people she helped to free that is revealed for the first time through groundbreaking research by Carnegie Mellon University historian, Edda Fields-Black, Ph.D., in her recent book COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War. Working in collaboration with J Henry Fair, renowned environmental photographer, and guest curator, Vanessa Thaxton-Ward, Ph.D., Director of the Hampton University Museum, the exhibition carefully recreates the full journey of these brave soldiers and freedom seekers on that fateful moonlit night.

On June 2, 1863, Harriet Tubman led the largest and most successful slave rebellion in the United States when her group of spies, scouts, and pilots piloted Colonel James Montgomery, the Second South Carolina Volunteers (300 Black soldiers), and one battery of the Third Rhode Island Artillery up the lower Combahee. African Americans working in the rice fields on seven rice plantations along the Combahee heard the uninterrupted steam whistles of the two US Army gunboats and ran to freedom. 756 enslaved people liberated themselves in six hours, more than ten times the number of enslaved people Tubman rescued on the Underground Railroad. The morning after the raid, 150 men who liberated themselves in the Raid joined the Second South Carolina Volunteers and fought for the freedom of others through the end of the Civil War.

Visitors to the exhibition will explore this dramatic event through Fair’s dynamic contemporary and environmentally sensitive photographs and video works, as well as contemporary and historic art objects, and material culture. Some of the artists included in the show include Jacob Lawrence, Faith Ringgold, William H. Johnson, and Stephen Towns. The exhibition sheds new light on the history of Tubman, the environmental challenges faced by enslaved laborers as they sought a path to freedom, and the significance of the Lowcountry’s historic rice fields on modern-day coastal wetlands.

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The Charleston Library Society and Buxton Books are honored to co-host renowned Dr. Edda Fields-Black in conversation with Dana Beach, Founder & Director Emeritus- South Carolina Coastal Conservation League, to discuss her most recent publication, COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War. In her book, Dr. Fields-Black dives into the story of the Combahee River Raid, one of Harriet Tubman’s most extraordinary accomplishments, based on original documents written by a descendant of one of the participants.

We will also discuss the upcoming exhibit that tells this story which opens at The Gibbes Museum in May 2025

An exhibit of photographs of threatened coastlines. Years in the making, this series looks at the things jeopardized by climate crisis ocean rise and storm activity

A multimedia collaboration with Chinese pianist Sophia Zhou playing the Goldberg Variations and 2019 Environmental Photographer of the Year J Henry Fair.
Presented by The Weeden Foundation for the Environment and Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation.
Johann Sebastian Bach was born and spent much of his working life in the brown coal regions of Germany. Today these provide a large percentage of the electricity for the powerhouse of Europe, and the largest impact of greenhouse gases in Europe.
The war in Ukraine, and its impact on natural gas supplies to Europe will only increase this conundrum.

This program will be a hybrid event (in-person AND virtual). Those interested in attending the program virtually can register here.

An evening conversation with photographer J Henry Fair and naturalist Ed Kanze, moderated by NCPR’s Mitch Teich. ADKX’s 2022 seasonal exhibition Scarred Landscape features Fair’s monumental aerial photographs documenting human impact upon the Adirondack landscape; the writings of Ed Kanze complement the images. This highly visual program will expand upon the exhibition narrative and offer a thoughtful dialogue between photographer and naturalist as they talk about their work and what the future holds for the region’s fragile beauty.

Join us for a virtual tour of J Henry Fair's studio (via Zoom)!
J Henry Fair is an American photographer and environmental activist. Known for his "chillingly beautiful" (Audubon Magazine) environmental aerial photos, Fair has called attention to environmental and political problems in different regions of the world. Fair is the winner of the 2019 "Environmental Photographer of the Year" and the 2012 "Earth Through A Lens" Award. In 2020, Fair was featured as one of the 12 most influential nature and conservation photographers of our time in the newly released book, Human Nature. The book received critical acclaim in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.

Important Zoom Information: Registration for all virtual events will close 5 hours before the program begins. Zoom invitations will be emailed 24 hours in advance of the program. If you don't receive an email with an invitation code, please check your spam folder or send an email to: dflanaganrca@aol.com.

Can photography lead to environmental engagement? Hosted by the Yale Center for Environmental Communication, join photographers J Henry Fair, Tim Laman, and Steve Winter, discussing their work in Human Nature: Planet Earth in Our Time, Twelve Photographers Address the Future of the Environment. The 2020 book, by George Blackwell and Ruth Hobday, connects written text with mesmerizing images to ask the question what do we have? What do we have to lose? And what do we have to change?

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Come to the museum and ask our experts about the making of the exhibit Artefakte. Museum für Naturkunde Berlin staff, the artist J Henry Fair, scientists from the Joint Research Centre and climate experts will be there to talk to you.

Art and environmental activism come together in this talk by celebrated American Photographer J Henry Fair. His superbly beautiful aerial images are appealing and bold- at first glance compositions of abstract shapes and colors. A closer look reveals them to be the detritus of industrial processes.