Virginia Voices

Five years after the Unite the Right violence, a new exhibit peers past the bloodshed

By Louis Hansen

Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO

After years as a street photographer, Eze Amos turned his lens on the upheaval in his adopted hometown of Charlottesville.

In 2017, Amos photographed the series of demonstrations and protests leading up to the violence of the Unite the Right rally.

He captured the quaint college town’s quick transformation into a frenzied battlefield on August 12. He shot defining photos of James Fields, the white supremacist who drove a car through peaceful protesters on the mall, killing Heather Heyer.

Amos took more than 9,000 photos of the demonstrations, searing violence and ensuing public ceremonies. And then, he ignored them for years.

“That left a big, big, big black eye on the community,” said Amos, a 47-year-old native of Nigeria. “That's stuff that we're still living with today.”

He revisited the photographs several months ago, just before the fifth anniversary of the demonstrations. He discovered, amidst the violence, moments of humanity, fellowship and strength.

Amos brought them together in a public exhibit, The Story of US, installed in the trees along the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville. It contains three dozen photos of unity and courage, accompanied by digital links allowing viewers to listen to interviews with the subjects of the photos.

The exhibit opened in early August, and will run through the end of September.

None of the images depict the violence that stained the city. “We need to reclaim the narrative,” Amos said, “reclaim our narrative and tell its arc.”

See more of Eze's project, The Story of Us

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

EZE AMOS

I knew from day one that I was not going to do anything for at least the first three or four years. I told myself that I was not going to touch it.

It’s not as if I'm some wise dude or whatever. I just knew that it's always wise to just let something sit, just let it sit.

Deep down, I’ve always known I was going to go back to those photos to tell the story. But I wasn’t sure what the story was going to look like.

Hear Eze talk about Uriah.

My biggest concern was, How do I tell the story of what happened without re-traumatizing folks? Basically just how do you tell the story of something that's that horrible? How do you go back?

Not just one person, Heather [Heyer] got killed, a lot of people got injured. And two policemen died.

I have photos, really really horrible photos, but they're all captivating photos because they capture those moments. I'm not going to do a public show of those photos.

I have a lot of friends who suffered serious, direct trauma. It was very, very important for me, personally, not to be that person that will retraumatize my friends.

[So] for the longest time, I kept asking myself, How do I tell the story?

I started going through the photos, just to make sense of it all. And I saw this photo of my friend, her name is Shell, consoling people that had just been struck by the car [that killed Heyer and injured several others].

I saw in her eyes that I was like, whoa, I want to ask her what was going on. I wish I knew what she told them. I just want to hear it.

Hear Dee Dee’s story.

I think that was when it hit me. I don't think it's my story to tell. It is Charlottesville’s story to tell. So Charlottesville's going to tell their stories by the photos I took of them.

I [wanted to] hear the story of people in these photos. I interviewed them not about everything, but about that moment. And from there they could talk about the entire experience.

I only asked them three questions: Describe the moments in the photo. What was going on?

The second question was, what role did the community play in this photo?

The last question was, five years later, where are we as a community? Score us.

How are we doing?

Videos produced by VCIJ at WHRO.