D.C. Artist's Talk for "Where We Find Ourselves: The Photographs of Hugh Mangum, 1897-1922"

Self-taught photographer Hugh Mangum was born in 1877 in Durham, North Carolina, as its burgeoning tobacco economy put the frontier-like boomtown on the map. As an itinerant portraitist working primarily in North Carolina and Virginia during the rise of Jim Crow, Mangum welcomed into his temporary studios a clientele that was both racially and economically diverse. After his death in 1922, his glass plate negatives remained stored in his darkroom, a tobacco barn, for fifty years. Slated for demolition in the 1970s, the barn was saved at the last moment.

As editors Margaret Sartor and Alex Harris show in their book "Where We Find Ourselves," Mangum's photographs are an unparalleled document of life in the turbulent history of the American South at the turn of the 20th century. Join both editors for a conversation at the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C., in the William G. McGowan Theater. A book signing will follow the program.

"Where We Find Ourselves: The Photographs of Hugh Mangum, 1897-1922" is a publication of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke and UNC Press, part of the Documentary Arts and Culture Series.