Three years in the making, this body of work includes portraits, landscapes, and the oral histories of 12 families living in Tamina, Texas, a freedmen’s town.

Also being shown in this exhibit are portraits made by children of Tamina’s Community Center, where Corn and photographer Ben DeSoto taught 32 children photographic skills as they explored their heritage.

Traveling from as far away as the Carolinas and Georgia, freed slaves found work almost 150 years ago in the lumber industry of Montgomery County. In 1871, they created the community, Tamina, building churches, stores, schools, and buying their own land to farm. Today, Tamina, Texas, is one of the few remaining emancipation communities in the United States.

“The Ground on Which I Stand” exhibit is a compilation the oral histories gathered and portraits made of 12 families representing different aspects of this community — young and old, black cowboys, ministers, those who have created nonprofits to help their neighbors, folks whose families have lived in Tamina for seven generations, and those who are first-generation Tamina citizens. Their stories tell of a deep-rooted kinship with one another, with their values resting on family and community.