Raymond Thompson Jr: It’s hard to stop rebels that time travel

Through the use of archival fragments, historic ephemera and his own photographs, artist Raymond Thompson Jr focuses on previously concealed stories of slaves, maroons, and runaways. ‘It’s hard to stop rebels that time travel’ aims to expand narratives about the Black experience and connection to the ‘American’ landscape.

The project is centered around the city of New Bern, North Carolina in the US—established in 1710 as hub for the trade of human beings —an area rich with historic moments. Many maroons—enslaved people who had escaped their captors but chose not flee to the north— inhabited the liminal spaces in the vicinity. They created lives in hard access swamps or in the ungoverned wild spaces between plantations and their survival strategies and techniques can be thought of as ‘freedom practices.’ The materials in the book reach through time to these maroons of the 18th century and connect them to both the contemporary landscape and the viewer.

The slim, rectangular design of the book itself, echoes the format of a travel guide or field notebook to be slipped in a pocket to be of use on a journey.

Raymond Thompson Jr is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and visual journalist based in Austin, Texas, US. He has an MFA in Photography from West Virginia University, an MA in Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin, and a degree in American Studies from the University of Mary Washington. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

Pages: 112
Dimensions: 170 x 250 mm
Format: Hardcover
Language: English
Year: 2025
Publisher: Void