Arthur P. Bedou (1880-1966)
He was an African-American photographer based out of New Orleans who was for a time the personal photographer of Booker T. Washington and documented his life extensively over the last decade of Washington’s life. He also documented campus life at the Tuskegee Institute and the city life of New Orleans, especially the city’s black residents. For nearly 70 years, he photographed leaders of his nation, as well as Creole families in New Orleans. Early in his career, in 1903, Bedou showed his work to Booker T. Washington, president of Tuskegee Institute. For the next decade, he worked as one of the official institute photographers. He traveled with Mr. Washington and was able to capture the essence of his public appearances and the nature of his work at Tuskegee.
Through his connections with Mr. Washington, Bedou earned projects at Fisk University and many other black colleges and universities. He served as official photographer for the National Medical Association, National Baptist Convention, and the National Negro Business League. Back home in New Orleans, he often did work for Xavier University, documented deportation of Marcus Garvey, and the cornerstone laying of Corpus Christi Church. In 1907, he achieved national recognition by winning the gold medal for photography from the Jamestown Tercentennial Exposition. In late 1944, Dillard University hosted the first public show of Bedou’s work.
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Pictures and Progress by
Pictures and Progress explores how, during the nineteenth century and the early twentieth, prominent African American intellectuals and activists understood photography's power to shape perceptions about race and employed the new medium in their quest for social and political justice. They sought both to counter widely circulating racist imagery and to use self-representation as a means of empowerment. In this collection of essays, scholars from various disciplines consider figures including Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and W. E. B. Du Bois as important and innovative theorists and practitioners of photography. In addition, brief interpretive essays, or "snapshots," highlight and analyze the work of four early African American photographers. Featuring more than seventy images, Pictures and Progress brings to light the wide-ranging practices of early African American photography, as well as the effects of photography on racialized thinking. Contributors. Michael A. Chaney, Cheryl Finley, P. Gabrielle Foreman, Ginger Hill, Leigh Raiford, Augusta Rohrbach, Ray Sapirstein, Suzanne N. Schneider, Shawn Michelle Smith, Laura Wexler, Maurice O. Wallace
Picturing Black New Orleans by
Florestine Perrault Collins (1895-1988) lived a fascinating and singular life. She came from a Creole family that had known privileges before the Civil War, privileges that largely disappeared in the Jim Crow South. She learned photographic techniques while passing for white. She opened her first studio in her home, and later moved her business to New Orleans's black business district. Fiercely independent, she ignored convention by moving out of her parents' house before marriage and, later, by divorcing her first husband. Between 1920 and 1949, Collins documented African American life, capturing images of graduations, communions, and recitals, and allowing her subjects to help craft their images. She supported herself and her family throughout the Great Depression and in the process created an enduring pictorial record of her particular time and place. Collins left behind a visual legacy that taps into the social and cultural history of New Orleans and the South. It is this legacy that Arth#65533; Anthony, Collins's great-niece, explores in Picturing Black New Orleans. Anthony blends Collins's story with those of the individuals she photographed, documenting the profound changes in the lives of Louisiana Creoles and African Americans. Balancing art, social theory, and history and drawing from family records, oral histories, and photographs rescued from New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Anthony gives us a rich look at the cultural landscape of New Orleans nearly a century ago.
Booker T. Washington in American Memory by
Since the 1960s, many historians have condemned Booker T. Washington as a problematic, even negative, influence on African American progress. This attitude dramatically contrasts with the nationwide outpouring of grief and reverence that followed Washington's death in 1915. Kenneth M. Hamilton describes how, when, where, and why Americans commemorated the life of Booker T. Washington. For months following his death, tens of thousands of Americans, especially blacks, honored his memory. Their memorials revealed that Washington enjoyed widespread national support for his vision of America and the programs that he imparted to achieve his aspirations. Their actions and articulations provide rich insight into how a cross section of Washington's contemporaries viewed him. From private messages of solace to public pronouncements, countless Americans portrayed him as a revered national icon. Among other characteristics, commemorates voiced their appreciation of his humanitarianism, humility, nationalism, perseverance, philanthropy, progressivism, spirituality, and wisdom. Washington was the leading advocate of the Yankee Protestantism Ethic, which promoted education, and personal qualities such as pragmatism, perseverance, cleanliness, thrift, and the dignity of labor among African Americans.