Chasing the Paper Canoe, published by the Athenaeum Press of Coastal Carolina University, was a collaboration of many individuals, including me.
This body of work was a contemporary photographic journey and historic reimagining of traveler Nathaniel Bishop’s 2,500-mile journey from Montreal, Canada to the Gulf of Mexico through eastern waterways during 1874 and 1875 on a paper canoe.
Chasing the Paper Canoe examined Chapter 11 of Bishop’s journal Voyage of the Paper Canoe, tracing the Waccamaw River in North Carolina down to the Winyah Bay-Charleston area of South Carolina.
While the river and people that Bishop encountered are no longer the same, it is necessary to be conscious of what once existed in order to understand what is there today. In doing so, there is an ability to establish a similar connection that Bishop had created along these river communities during his voyage.
— Tracy Fish, Reno, Nevada
