by Alanah Swindle | Dec 22, 2023 | Black Portrait Photograph Collection, Theorizing the archive, Unknown Location
Creating pictorial genealogies was the means by which one could ensure against the losses of the past. . . .They provided a necessary narrative, a way for us to enter history without words. –bell hooks1 At the end of October 2023, our class, “Curating the Hidden...
by Alanah Swindle | Dec 22, 2023 | Black Portrait Photograph Collection, Texas, Tintypes, Unknown Location
In taking care to unpack the materiality of a given photograph, who do we leave behind? Is it possible to acknowledge all the hands involved in the process? “The photographer’s thumbprint, a common artifact, is in the lower right corner.”1 The above quote is culled...
by Taylor Brookins | Dec 7, 2023 | Black Portrait Photograph Collection, Texas, Theorizing the archive, Theory & Practice
Route via car from Texas to Delaware One thousand, six hundred- and forty-one-miles, a quick Google Maps search shows the driving distance from Texas to Delaware. It has been established that in 2023 a significant number of the photographs within the Black Portrait...
by Taylor Brookins | Dec 7, 2023 | Black Portrait Photograph Collection, Texas
Portrait of W.B. [Ganage?] “A cabinet card photograph of an unidentified man taken by the Lewison Brothers Cabinet Card Studio, the studio was located in San Antonio, Texas. The photograph is inscribed with Lewison Brothers on the front. Facing the photographer, the...
by Marie Pinkney | Dec 6, 2023 | Black Portrait Photograph Collection, Theory & Practice
Before writing this blog post I listened to an especially unpleasant audiobook for a different class. Like any normal grad student, I was cramming that day’s reading in the day before class, so I listened to this 6-hour audiobook all at once (I do not recommend). To...
by Lauren Bradshaw | Dec 6, 2023 | Black Portrait Photograph Collection, Theory & Practice
As someone with a background as an artist working in exclusively three dimensions, that is now in a material culture studies program, I have often struggled to view images as objects. I also have a strong tendency to gravitate towards abstraction rather than...
