Field Note: Tracing Unseen Routes

This summer, I created a short film map called Unseen Routes: Mapping Black Albany’s Past, Present, and Possible Futures for Compass Roses at Opalka Gallery. You can watch it here. And read my full reflection on Electric Relaxation.

When I first said yes to the project, I thought I’d make something tactile like a textile piece dyed in indigo, reaching back to my grandparents’ South Carolina roots. But the city had other plans. Spirit led me instead toward film. Once I said it aloud, everything opened.

I didn’t go searching for locations. They called me. Events, visits, family ties pulled me to the Hudson, the South End, Cherry Hill, the Empire State Plaza, and to Israel AME Church—my family’s church, where my grandmother founded the Martin Luther King Child Care Center in 1968. The Stephen and Harriet Myers Residence sits just six doors from my paternal grandmother’s former home. The past was already standing beside me.

Unseen Routes taught me that mapping isn’t about ownership, it’s about attention. Every place has a story, even the ones that seem erased. To live somewhere is to listen: to know what made your being there possible.

There are unseen routes everywhere. The work is to find them, to tell their truths, and to keep returning.

See you on the next step in the journey.