Pulp | Arts Round Ann Arbor

Ryan Henyard on the African American Cultural and Historical Museum of Washtenaw County in Ann Arbor. Photo by Lori Stratton.

Ryan Henyard appears ahead to visiting Euphie and her household every day.

The Dexter photographer drives to see his favourite trumpeter swans, who reside in a marsh on the nook of Scio Church and Parker roads in Ann Arbor.

He stops close to their nest, lower than 10 toes from the highway, and captures a photograph from his automotive window of Euphie peering from behind her massive white wings.

Taken in 2024, the photograph of Euphie, generally known as The Vigil, now hangs on the African American Cultural and Historical Museum of Washtenaw County in Ann Arbor.

The Vigil is one in all 20-plus images featured in Henyard’s present exhibition, Reclaiming the Wild: Connections Between Nature & Black History in Washtenaw County, which runs via December 31 on the museum.

The photograph’s title comes from the vigil Euphie and her accomplice stored over their nest of cygnet eggs.

“Over the past few years, I’ve been spending time learning more about them,” stated Henyard, who named Euphie after the euphonium.

“They have so much personality. It takes thirty-something days for them to make a nest and another thirty-something days for the eggs to hatch.”

In one other exhibition photograph, Sealed Among Our Pact, Euphie reveals six new cygnets to Henyard, who took the photograph on the nest this previous spring. The swan had beforehand misplaced a clutch of eggs earlier within the season.

“It’s like she’s saying, ‘Hey, they’re all here,’ before sitting back down,” Henyard stated. “It felt like a real connection.”

The Vigil, 2024, 24″x36″, digital {photograph}, pigment ink print, luster paper.

Sealed Among Our Pact, 2026, 8″x10″ digital {photograph}, pigment print on metallic paper.

Throughout his exhibition, Henyard attracts connections between wildlife, Black historical past, and social justice in Washtenaw County.

Those connections come to life whereas viewing Henyard’s compelling images, which characteristic Great Blue Herons, Sandhill Cranes, Bald Eagles, and different feathered buddies.

Henyard photographed the birds over a number of years at parks, nature preserves, public areas, and historic websites in Washtenaw County. He visits these locations year-round to review the birds’ behaviors and the way they reply to their habitats.

“I’ve gotten to become a little part of these places by being persistent and consistent in that way,” stated Henyard, who credit his mother and father for his love of birds and images. “And I’ve found that with a lot of different spots. There are a few different places where I’m at every single week, or multiple times every single week, that I’ve got a rhythm.”

A Misty Descent, 2021, 20″x30″, digital {photograph}, acrylic print.

Part of that rhythm began at Pinckney Recreation Area’s Halfmoon Lake, the place Henyard photographed a Great Blue Heron touchdown within the water on a misty morning in 2021. That majestic touchdown is captured within the photograph A Misty Descent.

“I made a concerted effort to visit all of the natural spaces around Washtenaw County, and in the process spent time in places I had largely avoided,” he wrote in his artist assertion for the exhibition.

“As I sat across the water from the picturesque homes on the other shore, I couldn’t help but think about how I only felt comfortable here alone and not when the beach grew crowded.”

In addition to being a wildlife photographer for the reason that pandemic, Henyard volunteers with the Justice InDeed undertaking, an initiative that addresses old racially restrictive covenants that prohibit folks of coloration from dwelling in native neighborhoods.

Those covenants had been written in Washtenaw County property information earlier than the Civil Rights Act handed in 1964.

While transcribing a whole bunch of paperwork for Justice InDeed, Henyard realized that some houses and properties close to Pinckney Recreation Area and Halfmoon Lake—which straddle the border of Livingston and Washtenaw counties—had been deeded with the outdated racially restrictive covenants.

“This knowledge, when it lands, disturbs the peaceful story this area often likes to tell about itself as surely as the heron after dawn,” Henyard wrote in his artist assertion. “Reflecting on what they say about belonging and where I feel safe is proof that the ripples from these histories are still spreading.”

By weaving these native histories and out of doors experiences along with his social justice work, Henyard helps reclaim pure areas and advocates for making them extra equitable and inclusive for BIPOC, disabled, and queer communities.

“I want everybody to have the kind of encounters and the wonderful things that I’ve seen,” stated Henyard, who’s additionally a trustee for Avalon Housing’s board.

“They’ve really inspired me to ask: ‘What other things can I tie into that are connected to the history of the county? How do I focus on sharing some of these stories the same way I share these birds?’ That’s what led to this idea of the collaboration with the museum.”

Henyard began collaborating with the museum on the Woodlawn Cemetery Restoration Project, which preserves and protects the county’s solely documented Black cemetery in Ypsilanti and maintains its historic integrity.

He’s assisted with the undertaking’s brush-clearing work and brought images of individuals volunteering on the cemetery.

“I was able to hand those photos back to the project and say, ‘Use these to help with marketing and everything else,’” Henyard stated. “I’ve gone birding out there a number of times to get a better idea of the space. … I’ve taken a bunch of aerial photos [with a drone] from the Woodlawn site, so I can reflect on where things have gone.”

That collaboration with the museum quickly led to Henyard’s first solo images exhibition there.

His framed images adorn the museum’s partitions and are interspersed with different exhibitions and artifacts chronicling 200 years of Black historical past in Washtenaw County.

“I found enjoyment tying meaning from the pictures I’m taking to the things that I care about in the rest of my life with my social justice work,” he stated. “But I’m starting to believe that they can be legible to other people, and so the exhibit is an attempt for me to not be shy about some of the things that I’ve learned.”

Altitude Adjustment, 2025, 13″x19″, digital {photograph}, pigment print.

Another necessary studying for Henyard got here whereas photographing at Watkins Lake State Park and County Preserve close to Manchester and Brooklyn. In 2025, he captured a picture known as Altitude Adjustment of a Bald Eagle hovering via the sky on a transparent, sunny day on the website.

After spending time photographing diving geese and Bald Eagles there, Henyard realized the park and protect bears the title of Royal and Sally Carpenter Watkins.

The first settlers to farm the world, the Watkins household participated within the Underground Railroad within the years main as much as the Civil War. In 1847, they found a slave catcher was coming to seize John Felix White, a freed man, in order that they helped him escape from the world.

“That was something I didn’t know about when I first went out there looking for wildlife,” Henyard stated. “But it became a really powerful thing to think about as I was out there in the space.”

Henyard shares that highly effective narrative via his exhibition alongside different Black historic figures highlighted on the museum. People like poet Robert Hayden and engineer Frederick Blackburn Pelham frequently encourage Henyard as a photographer, activist, and cultural organizer.

“I hope that when people walk through the museum, they appreciate some of the ideas that are in this house and some of these things that I’m bringing to it in this space,” he stated.

For his exhibition, Henyard additionally pays tribute to Black birders and Black hen photographers via a sequence of books by Black naturalist authors that he bought with grant funding and donated to the museum. The books can be found to borrow via the museum’s library.

“I remember the first Black bird photographer I ever saw was a man named Dudley Edmondson,” stated Henyard, who’s an avid reader.

“I said, ‘I can put his book in here so that I can show people [someone who’s] inspired me.’ I believe in practicing love via citation. It’s a way to easily show some appreciation for folks who have made things possible for you.”

In addition to offering books, Henyard plans to host a number of occasions on the museum linked to his exhibition. He desires to have talks about his images and social justice work and conduct hen walks in partnership with the Washtenaw Bird & Nature Alliance. 

In 2023, Henyard performed an instrumental function in serving to change the group’s name. The alliance was initially known as the Washtenaw Audubon Society and named after John James Audubon, who had a historical past of proudly owning and promoting slaves.

“I wasn’t willing to join when it was the Washtenaw Audubon Society, and I wrote a letter saying why I wasn’t willing to join,” Henyard stated. “I feel that ended up going to a committee assembly, then it ended up going to a board assembly, and so they voted to discover altering the title.

“[They] brought me onto the committee to help rename it, so I spent a bunch of time with it. I want to tell that story about how we’ve made this organization at least a little bit more welcoming to BIPOC and queer folks in the community.”

The Light Before We Land, 2023, 20″x30″, digital {photograph}, acrylic print.

Finally, Henyard plans to refresh the images in his exhibition to mirror the change of seasons. He desires guests to see among the birds of their habitats in the course of the winter.

“There’s one photo I have of sandhill cranes in the middle of a snowstorm. It looks almost like a pointillism piece where somebody’s doing a ton of little dots,” he stated.

“I was just catching a bunch of them flying around because some of them stay year-round. There are a lot of sandhill cranes in this exhibition in part because they’re just so charismatic. I didn’t get to experience them when I was a kid because they were [endangered], and they were so rare. Now, I can see them almost every day.”

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Lori Stratton is a library technician, author for Pulp, and author and editor of strattonsetlist.com.

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“Reclaiming the Wild: Connections Between Nature and Black History in Washtenaw County” runs through December 31 at the African American Cultural and Historical Museum of Washtenaw County. Located at 3261 Lohr Road in Ann Arbor, the museum is open Saturdays from noon to 4 pm. For details, visit the museum’s web site, or name 734-761-1717.