In the early 90s, Carrie Mae Weems traveled to the Sea Islands off the coat of Georgia and South Carolina where descendents of freed slaves maintain deep cultural inks to the past, all the while living in the present.   Weem's "Sea Island Series" combines photographs with text panels that dig deep into these layers of history.  She explored the culture of the Gullah who live on the island.  The Gullah are a people living on islands off the coast of Georgia and South Carolina whose ancestors were African captives brought to American during the antebellum period.   The Gullah are descendents of slaves from Africa's "Rice Coast" (an area stretching from Senegal down to Sierra Leone and Liberia) who were valued by American colonists for their expertise in cultivating the difficult crop.  Weems, who was trained as a folklorist, documented the remnants of African culture that have been preserved by this geographically isolated and tightly knit community for the last three hundred years.