Out The E

Elaine, Arkansas carries one of the most suppressed chapters in American history: in 1919, hundreds of Black sharecroppers organizing against peonage were massacred by white mobs aided by federal troops—events covered up for generations and only classified as lynchings in 2015. During the Covid pandemic, Harlan Bozeman began returning regularly to Elaine with a large-format camera, building relationships and making intimate, monumental portraits of the people who remain—children in particular—on basketball courts, empty streets, porches, and among headstones. His photographs are interspersed with historical images from the aftermath of the 1919 massacre, pulling past and present into uncomfortable proximity. The title comes from local vernacular—"out the E" meaning out of Elaine—and the book's dimensions deliberately echo Walker Evans's American Photographs. An essay by Zora J Murff accompanies the work.