All across the Americas, from the 16th century onwards, enslaved Africans escaped their captors and struck out on their own. These runaways, having found their freedom, established their own communities or joined with indigenous peoples to forge new identities.


Cimarron, borrowing a Spanish-American term for these fugitive former slaves, is a new series of photographic portraits of their descendants. From Brazil, Colombia, the Caribbean islands and Central America, as far as the southern United States, elaborate masquerades are staged that celebrate and keep alive the history and memory of African slaves and their creole or mixed-race descendants. Stock characters are portrayed in costume, or in grotesque or satirical representations. A huge variety of African tribal dress, wild ritual regalia and shimmering Mardi Gras outfits feature in breathtaking succession. Vividly coloured silks and cottons combine with woven fibres, leaves, feathers, and bodypaint; props include emblems of slavery and slavemasters – ropes, sticks, guns and machetes. These photographs record real people whose collective sense of memory, folk history and imagination dramatically challenges our expectations.

Charles Fréger’s work has established a large and growing following among connoisseurs of contemporary photography, defining a new genre of documentary portraiture that extends and deepens our sense of the human past and the present.
纵观美洲各地，自16世纪以后，沦为奴隶的非洲人从奴隶主手中逃脱，并开始自力更生，自寻出路。这些逃亡者，找到了自由，建立自己的社区团体或加入当地族群以获得新身份。

《西马伦河》一书，为这些逃亡的前奴隶们借用了一个源自西班牙的美国词语，作为他们后代的摄影肖像新系列的名字。从巴西、哥伦比亚和加勒比群岛、中美洲，远至美国南部，都在当地举办了假面舞会，颂扬非洲奴隶及其克里奥尔后裔或混血后裔，让他们的历史和对他们的回忆得以流传。固定角色通过戏服，或以怪诞或讽刺的象征表演角色。五花八门的非洲部落裙，狂野的宗教仪式行头，闪闪发光的全套狂欢节服装接二两三相继登场，令人吃惊。颜色鲜艳的丝绸和棉，以及纺织纤维，树叶，羽毛，身体彩绘；各种小道具，包括奴隶制和奴隶主象征-绳索、棍棒、枪支和砍刀。

查尔斯•弗雷杰的作品在当代摄影鉴赏家中建立了一个庞大且日益增长的追随者群体，定义了记录片式肖像画式的新作品类型，延伸并深化了我们对人类历史和当下的感受力。