From Melissa Whitworth’s article for The Independent:
Denny’s family discovery led her on a journey across America from New York, to San Francisco, to Maine to New Orleans, against the backdrop of New England witch hysteria, photographing 75 modern-day witches, aged 20 to 85. Her odyssey took three years to complete.
The portraits, a diverse, eclectic photographic coven, now form part of the finale in a three-part exhibition in Salem – “back where I belong,” Denny says – at the Peabody Essex Museum. Alongside relics from the 17th century trials, is a dress by designer Alexander McQueen – made in 2007 to honour his own executed Salem ancestor, Elizabeth How. The museum houses original documents from the period, displayed in the first part of the exhibit entitled ‘No one was safe’; arrest warrants and testimony of Salem villagers under interrogation and letters both against and in support of the accused. Elizabeth How’s testimony, on display, replies to the accusations of cursing villagers and livestock: ‘If it was the last moment I was to live, God knows I am innocent of any[ ]thing in this nature… You would not have me confess that which I know not.’
Browse the series “Major Arcana: Witches in America” at ClampArt
Browse all of Frances F. Denny’s work at ClampArt