Caroline Pietsch
Riverside
I chose an ad from the New York Gazette published on September 4, 1766. I was struck by the image of a man's clothes by the river, and the possibility that the man had actually drowned just served to set off even further the bias that is inherently present in ads regarding runaway slaves. The writers of the ad did not make any attempts to discover whether or not Ben was even alive, but simply assumed that he had escaped.
I first sketched out the image in pencil, before going over it in charcoal. I wanted it to have a darker feel, so I felt that charcoal would be most effective.