This photograph of a young woman is part of the Bell-Sloman Collection donated to Brock University in 2010. It is an important body of work that comprises more than 300 images that span more than a century and document the Bell and Sloman families, descendants of former enslaved people in the American south. It also illustrates how photography is a powerful tool for self-representation. The collection has been studied extensively by Art Gallery of Ontario curator Dr. Julie Crooks, who calls it a “fugitive archive” and a holding that offers an opportunity to preserve, salvage, and recover histories of African-Canadian communities whose stories and artefacts are often left untold or subject to erasure.