Interview with Photographer Jeanine Michna-Bales about Her Traveling Exhibition Through Darkness to Light

They left during the middle of the night—often carrying little more than guidance of the north star.

An estimated 100,000 enslaved people between 1830 and the end of the Civil War in 1865 chose to embark on this journey in search of freedom. Occasionally, they were guided from one secret, safe location to the next by an ever-changing, clandestine group known as the Underground Railroad. Many consider the Underground Railroad to be the first great freedom movement in the Americas and the first time when people of different races, faiths, and genders worked together in harmony for freedom and justice.

Photographer Jeanine Michna-Bales spent more than a decade meticulously researching “fugitive” enslaved people and the ways they escaped to freedom for Through Darkness to Light: Photographs Along the Underground Railroad. While the unnumbered routes of the Underground Railroad encompassed countless square miles, the path Michna-Bales documented encompasses roughly 2,000 miles. The photographs are based off of actual sites, cities, and places that freedom-seekers passed through during their journey.

Jeanine Michna-Bales grew up in Indiana, which would have been part of the Northwest Territory. It was an important area to the Underground Railroad, being just north of the Ohio River. The Ohio River served as a boundary between free states and states where slavery was legal, however being north of the river did not mean safety. The history of the Underground Railroad in Indiana was indirectly a part of Jeanine’s experience growing up, but it wasn’t until later in life that reflection brought it into focus for her.

Jeanine Michna-Bales, Look for the Grey Barn Out Back. Joshua Eliason Jr. barnyards and farmhouse, with a tunnel leading underneath the road to another station, Centerville, Indiana, 2013; digital C-print, 25 x 36 inches; © Jeanine Michna-Bales. (Slightly cropped)

In Through Darkness to Light, Jeanine Michna-Bales documented places and perspectives that few have experienced.

The nighttime photographs of barns, shelters, and landscapes along the railroad pathway capture scenes that are as she describes “visually disturbing and uncertain” yet at the end show a light of hope.

This work celebrates the brave individuals that made the journey, those that were lost, and those that helped others on their escape to freedom. It shares a perspective of the locations and how they may have looked and felt to those on the perilous journey.

As part of our celebration of 20 years in the Crossroads, Mid-America Arts Alliance’s Culture Lab will feature ExhibitsUSA’s Through Darkness to Light: Photographs Along the Underground Railroad, our longest-running national touring exhibition.

Jeanine spoke with us about her work and research. Here’s a selection from our conversation.

M-AAA: What was the genesis of the Underground Railroad project?

Jeanine: “This work came out of a time when I had begun a journaling practice inspired by reading the book The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron—sometime around 2002. As an artist, I think you are gifted ideas and I believe this particular project chose me because it kept showing up on the pages over and over again.

“I grew up in Indiana and we must have had a module in elementary school on the Underground Railroad. I remember being fascinated by the process and what it must have been like having to go through that much to gain freedom.

“Initially, while planning the photo essay, I considered photographing safe houses from the station master’s perspective. However, I realized that this didn’t fully capture the reality of the journey. Station masters were just one part of the network—ultimately, it was the escaping enslaved individuals who moved themselves from place to place. They acted with their own agency, doing everything they could to stay alive, remain hidden, and find their way north.”

M-AAA: How did the Underground Railroad project start to take off?

“When I began researching the project in the early 2000s, there had been little documentation of actual safe houses along the many routes enslaved people used to escape. I was aware of well-known stations, like the Levi Coffin House in Indiana, now a historic site. But uncovering evidence of lesser-known locations proved to be much more difficult.

“Around 2004 when I was back home visiting family, I went to the William H. Smith Memorial Library at the Indiana Historical Society. They have extensive historical primary source materials in their collections including an original copy of The Underground Railroad: From Slavery to Freedom by Wilbur H. Siebert. To view the book, you have to wear gloves. There’s just something that draws you in as you page through manuscripts, minutes books, and newspapers from the 1800s.

“While I was there, a librarian approached me and mentioned she had compiled a folder of clippings related to the Underground Railroad. Every time she came across a reference—whether historical or contemporary—she photocopied it and added it to the file. I spent a few hours going through the materials but barely scratched the surface. So, I had copies made and brought them home to add to my growing library on the subject.

“Through my research, I learned that freedom seekers typically traveled about 20 miles per night under favorable conditions. When mapping a possible route an enslaved person might have taken, I used known stations as anchor points and plotted additional locations roughly 20 miles apart. The final route stretched from the Cane River plantations in Louisiana all the way to Ontario, Canada.”

Jeanine Michna-Bales, On the Way to the Hicklin House Station, San Jacinto, Indiana, 2013; digital C-print, 17 x 24 1/2 inches; © Jeanine Michna-Bales. (Slightly cropped)

M-AAA: Once you had the research underway, what was the process like to begin the photographs?

Jeanine: “I am, admittedly, a slow learner. Early on, I photographed some of the Cane River plantations during the day, but the images felt flat and unremarkable. As I continued my research, it finally clicked: most of the movement didn’t happen in daylight—it happened at night. That realization became the foundation for how I approached the photography, and it also helped shape the title of the series.

In 2012, while photographing in Tennessee—where my husband is from—I took a picture of the forest at night. When I got the film developed, I remember thinking, ‘This is it.’ It was visually unsettling and uncertain—exactly the kind of emotion the images needed to evoke.

“The bulk of the images were taken in 2013 and 2014, with a few, I returned to rephotograph in 2015.”

M-AAA: Why did you have to go back and retake photos?

Jeanine: “I envisioned the final images printed at a large scale, with every detail sharply in focus and not lost in shadow. I used to photograph with a 4×5 camera with sheet film, which produced images with exceptional depth of field—everything from foreground to background rendered crisp and clear. But the process was slow and unpredictable. Eventually, I switched to a digital system and chose Canon for its tilt-shift lenses, which allowed me to maintain straight perspective lines.

“Early digital sensors, however, struggled with low-light conditions. Since I was shooting at night with a very small aperture—usually around f/22—the resulting files were filled with digital noise: red, blue, green, and white specks scattered throughout the image. I researched ways to manage this noise and experimented with techniques like stacking—taking around 12 images of the same scene and layering them in Photoshop at different opacities. When I returned to some of the locations, I couldn’t always recreate the same composition I’d fallen in love with. Either the perspective was slightly off, or something had changed—like an 1800s barn covered in vinyl siding.

“In those cases, on the computer I would zoom in to 400% in Photoshop and manually remove the noise, pixel by pixel. It took about eight hours a day, over two to three weeks, to finish just one image. So, when newer, more advanced sensors were released, I rushed to the camera store to upgrade.”

Jeanine Michna-Bales, Wading Prior to Blackness. Grant Parish, Louisiana, 2014; digital C-print, 17 x 24 1/2 inches; © Jeanine Michna-Bales. (Slightly cropped)

M-AAA: What else have you learned through the Underground Railroad research that has stayed with you?

Jeanine: “It wasn’t until I started doing the research that I realized just how complicit the North was in perpetuating slavery—right alongside the South. Northern banks financed plantations, insurance companies insured enslaved people, and consumers were buying cotton and sugarcane produced through enslaved labor.

“I read firsthand, often terrifying, accounts from formerly enslaved people, including Frederick Douglass. He pointed out that you don’t need to witness slavery to understand its cruelty—you can simply read the local, county, and state laws that outlined, in disturbing detail, the legal punishments plantation owners were allowed to inflict.

“I hadn’t learned about the Black Codes in school—laws passed in the South after the Civil War that criminalized even minor offenses for newly freed Black people. These laws evolved into Jim Crow legislation and later fed into the creation of sundown towns, where Black individuals could be arrested simply for being outside after dark. While the 13th Amendment abolished slavery, it included a loophole—permitting involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime. That led to convict leasing and chain gangs. Some historians argue this system was even worse than slavery itself because those imprisoned could be worked to death and easily replaced. It laid the foundation for what we now call the prison industrial complex.

“I think it is important to discuss the legacy of slavery —especially at a time when discussions of race are being stripped from classrooms. Although I was taught about slavery in school, I don’t think I fully understood its deep entanglement with American history—or how its effects still shape our society—until I undertook this project.

“The purpose of this series is to start conversations. . . . History matters. If we know the past, we can try to navigate a different, hopefully better, future. I am thankful the project will continue touring through 2032, I believe it is more important now than ever.”

You have many photo projects that you’ve been working on over the last decade. How did begin your photo essay, Standing Together, about the campaign for women’s rights to vote?

Jeanine: “While researching the anti-slavery movement, I discovered that Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott were barred from participating in the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London simply because they were women. In response, they vowed to organize a convention focused on advancing women’s rights. That promise led to the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848—the first women’s rights convention held in the United States. The American suffrage movement has direct roots in the fight against slavery.”

M-AAA: Do you have any advice for people working on creative or historical projects?

Jeanine: “Local historical societies are an incredible resource for research, yet they’re often overlooked. The people who work there are usually extremely helpful and knowledgeable—they know their archives inside and out.

“There’s something powerful about viewing original, period documents. They have a way of transporting you to a different time and place—you can almost feel the history in them. I experienced a similar sensation at some of the locations I photographed. Standing on the grounds of the plantations, I would get chills and the hairs on the back of my neck would stand up. The trauma left on the land was still present.”

Learn more about Jeanine’s work:

Two Minutes to Midnight and the Architecture of Armageddon (ExhibitsUSA national touring exhibition), Countdown: A Visual Exploration of the Cold War’s Opposing Architecture, Standing Together: Inez Milholland’s Final Campaign for Women’s Suffrage.

Jeanine will be present during the Mid-America Arts Alliance Culture Lab reception on First Friday, June 6, 2025. Through Darkness to Light runs through July 11, 2025. Appointments are available by calling 816-800-0926.