By Herb Frazier, special to Charleston Currents  |  A hand-tinted photograph captures a unique panoramic view 90 years ago of the iconic White Bridge at Magnolia Plantation and Gardens with a glimpse of the pointed cupola of Magnolia’s Main House.

What gives this old-fashioned picture an even more intriguing tinge, however, is a haunting image of a well-dressed artist painted into the photo as a bygone act of defiance against southern racial norms at that time.

Wearing what appears to be a seersucker suit and straw hat, the artist, seated before an easel, is dwarfed by the foot bridge, towering oaks and bushy azaleas in a late 1920s snapshot of America’s oldest garden.

Today, a copy of that original wide-angled view hangs in the sitting room of Magnolia’s Main House where the artist  ̶  presumably Edwin Augustus Harleston   ̶  would not have been invited for dinner because of his mixed parentage. …