Provenance
Purchased from Brian Cassidy, Bookseller on the Edwin J. Beinecke Book Fund and the Walter Jennings Memorial Fund, 2016.
Summary
Photographs of African American life in rural Florida by an unidentified, possibly African American, photographer, 1924-1930. Includes 23 photographic postcards and 13 photographs. Photographs depict: solo and group portraits of unidentified men, women, and children, many of whom are dressed in formal clothing; an unidentified teamster standing on a tiller and driving a mule team beside a citrus grove; an unidentified man standing in front of a boulder bearing a historical marker for Florida Governor Napoleon Bonaparte Broward; and two images of an alligator farm. All but one of the photographs are dated in manuscript; six photographs have manuscript captions on the versos identifying the sitters or subject, and depict: a portrait of a couple, Mr. and Mrs. J. Evens; a seated portrait of Joseph Jackson, 77, and Sampson Gurley, 80, in Orlando, Florida; a portrait of Archie McPherson, 76, holding a rake and standing in front of citrus trees; a portrait of Eugene Shelton, 70 years, standing in front of a citrus grove; a seated portrait of Idelles Tailor; and a scene with two wooden dwellings, inscribed by the photographer: "No 1 is the the cabin in witch I make my pictures / Negro cabin".