From photography’s beginnings in the United States, Black studio photographers operated on the developing edge of photographic media to produce beautiful portraits for their clients, while also making a variety of other photographic work in keeping with important movements like pictorialism, modernism, and abstraction. Called to the Camera illustrates the artistic virtuosity, social significance, and political impact of African American photographers working in commercial portrait studios during photography’s first century. The exhibition is among the first to focus exclusively on this national cohort of artists and entrepreneurs, while situating that group within a broader inclusive history of picture-making. Called to the Camera reframes the history of American photography by placing Black photographers and subjects at the center of that story, arguing for a reconsideration of how historians and institutions evaluate and display photography.

This exhibition brings together over 250 photographs, many of them unique objects, from the nineteenth century to the present. Celebrating famous portrait photographers such as James Presley Ball, James Van Der Zee, and Addison Scurlock, this exhibition additionally brings attention to more than two dozen other photographers, including Arthur P. Bedou and Florestine Perrault Collins, Arthur L. Macbeth, Emmanuel F. Joseph, and more. Works by these and other artists illustrate how professional Black photographers were crucial to their communities’ efforts to represent themselves in the early twentieth century. Works by modern and contemporary photographers make clear the connection between the historical legacy of Black photography studios and what we consider to be art photography today.

Called to the Camera: Black American Studio Photographers is organized by the New Orleans Museum of Art and is sponsored by Catherine and David Edwards; Kitty and Stephen Sherrill; New Orleans Tourism and Cultural Fund; Tina Freeman and Philip Woollam; Liberty Bank; the Del and Ginger Hall Photography Fund; Milly and George Denegre; Andrea and Rodney Herenton; and Cherye and Jim Pierce. Additional support is provided by Philip DeNormandie; Aimee and Michael Siegel; Kenya and Quentin Messer; L. Kyle Roberts; the A. Charlotte Mann and Joshua Mann Pailet Endowment; Beaucoup Eats; Mr. and Mrs. Nelson Alexander; Deena Sivart Bedigian; Sesthasak Boonchai; Kim Boyle; Mel Buchanan and Lance Dickman; Claire Elizabeth Gallery; Pia Z. Ehrhardt; Jacqueline and Randall Hithe and Family; Rayne Martin; Colleen Mullins; Chantell M. Nabonne; Stephen Rosenfeld and Margot Botsford; and Tod and Kenya Smith. This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. Research for this project was funded by the Mellon Foundation and the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library at Emory University.

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Hooks Brothers Studio, Untitled [Hooks’ School of Photography Students Reviewing Photographs], c. 1950. Gelatin silver print. Collection of Andrea and Rodney Herenton. (The Hooks Brothers Photograph Collection, consisting of original photographs, negatives, equipment, and ephemera was acquired by the RWS Company, LLC in 2018.)

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Studio Circle | $350

• Recognition as a Studio Circle sponsor online
• A complimentary one-year Sustaining or Young Fellows membership to the museum
• The opportunity to schedule a private tour of the exhibition with Assistant Curator of Photographs Brian Piper