Jeanine Michna-Bales (born 1971) is an American artist who works primarily through photographic essays.Mendelsohn, Meredith. "She Was More Than Just the 'Most Beautiful Suffragist,'" The New York Times, August 19, 2020. Retrieved February 1, 2023.Mansky, Jackie. "Photographer Reconstructs 1,400-Mile Route Along the Underground Railroad," Smithsonian Magazine, September 19, 2017. Retrieved February 1, 2023. Her projects blend documentary and fine art, research and history, examining forgotten, overlooked or invisible aspects of American history and contemporary socio-politics.Berger, Maurice. "From Slavery to Freedom: Revealing the Underground Railroad,'" The New York Times, March 29, 2017. Retrieved February 1, 2023.Copeland, Colette. "A Conversation with Jeanine Michna-Bales," Glasstire, February 11, 2017. Retrieved February 1, 2023.Copeland, Colette. "Jeanine Michna-Bales Revisits the Final Campaign for Women’s Suffrage," Glasstire, September 13, 2021. Retrieved February 1, 2023.Schiller, Jakob. "This Is Where Americans Planned to Spend the Nuclear Holocaust,". Wired, June 4, 2014. Retrieved February 1, 2023. She has often juxtaposed evocative landscape photographs and historical re-enactments with primary source documents such as maps, news clippings, government materials and artifacts in order to bring to life specific moments, experiences, places and eras from the past.Voon, Claire. "Photos Evoke the Terror and Hope of the Underground Railroad," Hyperallergic, April 28, 2017. Retrieved February 1, 2023.Crawford, Amy. "Recreating a Suffragist’s Campaign Through the American West," Smithsonian Magazine, July 2020. Retrieved February 1, 2023.Alterwitz, Linda. "Art + Science: Jeanine Michna-Bales," Lenscratch, October 8, 2016. Retrieved February 8, 2023. New York Times writer and cultural historian Maurice Berger called her project on the Underground Railroad evocative and consequential in its visual portrayal of history through the eyes of an individual: "Her photographs are dark, atmospheric and haunting … They evoke both a sense of the adventure and peril of this journey, one that would have dire consequences if unsuccessful."
Michna-Bales's work has been exhibited at institutions including the Alexandria Black History Museum,Exhibits USA. Through Darkness to Light: Photographs Along the Underground Railroad, Exhibitions. Retrieved February 7, 2023. Hunter Museum of American Art,Hunter Museum of American Art. Art Wise: Jeanine Michna-Bales, Events. Retrieved February 7, 2023. Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville,Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville. "Southern Exposure: Portraits of a Changing Landscape," Exhibitions. Retrieved February 6, 2023. National Museum of Nuclear Science & History,Mid-America Arts Alliance. "Two Minutes to Midnight and the Architecture of Armageddon," Exhibits USA. Retrieved February 1, 2023. Portland Art Museum,Portland Art Museum. Cypress Swamp, Middle Mississippi, People. Retrieved February 7, 2023. and Open Society Foundations.Silverman, Rena. "Nigeria’s Literature of Love," The New York Times, October 19, 2015. Retrieved February 1, 2023. It belongs to the permanent collections of the Duke University Archive of Documentary Arts,Duke University Archive of Documentary Arts. Jeanine Michna-Bales photographs, 2013-2015. Retrieved February 7, 2023. Library of Congress,Library of Congress. Eagle Hollow through Hunter's Bottom/Jeanine Michna-Bales, Collection. Retrieved February 7, 2023. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston,Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Jeanine Michna-Bales, People. Retrieved February 7, 2023. and Phillips Collection,The Phillips Collection. Jeanine Michna-Bales. Retrieved February 1, 2023. among others. Her books include Through Darkness to Light: Photographs Along the Underground Railroad (2017), Standing Together: Inez Milholland’s Final Campaign for Women’s Suffrage (2021), and Countdown: A Visual Exploration of the Cold War's Opposing Architecture (co-authored with Adam Reynolds, 2022).Michna-Bales, Jeanine. Standing Together: Inez Milholland's Final Campaign for Women's Suffrage, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2017. Retrieved February 7, 2023.Michna-Bales, Jeanine and Adam Reynolds. Countdown: A Visual Exploration of the Cold War’s Opposing Architecture, Atlanta, GA: Yoffy Press, 2022. Retrieved February 6, 2023.
Biography Michna-Bales was born in Midland, Michigan in 1971 and grew up in Indiana.Princeton University Art Museum. Jeanine Michna-Bales, Collections. Retrieved February 7, 2023. She majored in advertising and minored in art at the University of Florida (BS, 1994) and initially worked as an advertising art director.Farrell, Laurie Ann. "At PDNB Gallery, artist Jeanine Michna-Bales follows in the footsteps of women’s suffragist," Dallas Morning News, October 8, 2021. Retrieved February 6, 2023. While living in San Francisco, she studied photography and eventually turned to fine art after moving to Dallas in 2005. In addition to her museum shows, she has had solo exhibitions at PDNB Gallery (Dallas, 2017–21), Arnika Dawkins Gallery (Atlanta, 2017–21),Cash, Stephanie. "Jeanine Michna-Bales: Through Darkness to Light: Seeking Freedom along the Underground Railroad at Arnika Dawkins Gallery," Photograph Magazine, March 19, 2017. Retrieved February 1, 2023. The Phillips Collection (2019), and AIRIE Nest Gallery (Everglades National Park, 2020), among other venues.Mitchell, Deborah. "New AIRIE exhibition in Everglades National Park examines the little-known history of societies established by former slaves in the Florida wilderness," South Dade News Leader, February 20, 2020. Retrieved February 6, 2023. She is based in Dallas.
Photographic essays Michna-Bales's project, Through Darkness to Light: Seeking Freedom on the Underground Railroad (2002–16), photographically reconstructed a single, possible 1,400-mile Underground Railroad passage north from Louisiana to Ontario, Canada, documenting a history still largely invisible because it was conducted undercover and in secret.Cascone, Sarah & Taylor Dafoe. "7 Breakthrough Artists to Discover at the 2018 AIPAD Photography Show," Artnet, April 6, 2018. Retrieved February 1, 2023. It involved ten years of research and extensive travel, culminating in a touring exhibition organized by Mid-America Arts Alliance's ExhibitsUSA (2017–27) and a bookMichna-Bales, Jeanine. Through Darkness to Light: Photographs Along the Underground Railroad, Princeton Architectural Press, 2017. Retrieved February 7, 2023. containing a foreword by civil rights leader Andrew Young, scholarly essays, accounts by passengers themselves, and other historical materials.Bareman, Karin. "Imagining a Road to Freedom – Jeanine Michna-Bales’ Through Darkness to Light: Photographs Along the Underground Railroad," C4 Journal, June 16, 2022. Retrieved February 1, 2023. The photographs, primarily nocturnal landscapes devoid of people, were shot from a first-person point of view at night when freedom seekers would have been traveling.Anspon, Catherine D. "Who Was Inez Milholland?" Paper City, September 2021. Retrieved February 6, 2023.Miller, Stuart. "A powerful symbol of resistance, the Underground Railroad inspires a wave of books, plays, TV and more," Los Angeles Times, March 16, 2017. Retrieved February 6, 2023.
The essay's narrative, aided by descriptive and allegorical image titles, progresses dramatically from a ramshackle plantation cabin (Decision to Leave, 2013) through gradually brightening forests, swamps and safe houses to ultimate deliverance (the sunlit images, Within Reach and Freedom, 2014). Critics described the photographs as "heavy with atmosphere," "dark and brooding," and "haunting, but hopeful,"Hannon, Kerry. "Art Created 100 Years Apart, Linked by Trauma, Offers Solace,'" The New York Times, May 21, 2021. Retrieved February 6, 2023. with a palpable sense of the risk, fear, uncertainty and physical challenge of the journey.Lam, May-Ying. "What it was like to walk in the shoes of America’s slaves," The Washington Post, February 1, 2016. Retrieved February 1, 2023.Wright, Allison. "Through Darkness to Light: Visions of the Underground Railroad," Virginia Quarterly Review, Winter 2017. Retrieved February 1, 2023. Hyperallergics Claire Voon wrote, "Michna-Bales’s images explore the famous passageway in an unprecedented way. Her contemporary perspective stirs our senses, with the quiet environments inviting us to not only reflect on these covert, risk-filled voyages but to also imagine ourselves embarking on one of our own."
In a subsequent project, The Four Moments of the Sun (2015–present), Michna-Bales took a similar approach to document the forgotten history of Florida's late-18th and 19th-century "maroon" communities—free and formerly enslaved Africans who settled deep in the wilderness of the Everglades to maintain their freedom.WLRN-FM. "Florida’s Maroon Communities," WLRN, Sundial, February 25, 2020. Retrieved February 1, 2023.
In two photo essays, Michna-Bales explored existential threats, past and present. Fallout (2013–22) documented intact, hidden or underground nuclear fallout shelters in fourteen cities—as well as related propaganda—left behind by the Cold War generation, through photographs, declassified government documents and old newspaper articles. The shelters—many still containing canned food and furniture—were endorsed by official civil defense programs despite being largely placebos, a fact made evident in chilling official documents detailing casualty estimates.Tandy, Katie. "The Sordid Psychology of Nuclear Decimation," Ravishly, June 5, 2014. Retrieved February 1, 2023.Honegger, Michael. "Jeanine Michna-Bales and Adam Reynolds: Countdown," Lenscratch, February 9, 2023. Retrieved February 14, 2023. Reviews described Michna-Bales's unpopulated images as quiet studies in architecture that served as "haunting time capsules" revealing the era's sense of dread and instability. In 2021, the project was paired with another by photographer Adam Reynolds documenting U.S. nuclear missile silos in a six-museum traveling exhibition, "Two Minutes to Midnight and the Architecture of Armageddon" (2021–6), which formed the basis of their Countdown (2022) book.Babb, Christine Hughes. "The Cold War: A thing of the past or our present and future?" The Advocate, July 14, 2022. Retrieved February 1, 2023.
In Terra Fractura (2015–present), Michna-Bales examined the negative and unstudied impacts of fracking, which has transformed previously safe communities into active, man-made earthquake zones in eight US states. The project consisted of earthquake epicenter portraits depicting an array of everyday landscapes, from rural backyards to freeways in affected areas in Dallas-Ft. Worth, which sits above the Barnett Shale formation. Lenscratch Magazine'''s Linda Alterwitz wrote that Michna-Bales's use of light, shadow, movement and composition conveyed "an inviting and simultaneously threatening sense of place."