Description
University Press of Florida, Gainesville, Published 2012. Hardcover, xi, 129 pp.; 26 cm; First Edition (with full number line); illustrated with 59 black-and-white photographs and 10 color plates.
Rare, out-of-print & unusual books · Since 1997
112
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Catalog notes
Condition & notes
In Very Good condition with a Very Good dust jacket. Purple cloth boards with silver lettering on spine; mild shelf and edge wear. Binding tight. Inscribed (personalized) and signed by the author, first name only, on title page; pages otherwise clean and unmarked. Pictorial dust jacket with a hand-colored studio portrait of Neliska "Baby" Briscoe (mid-1930s) holding a baton on front panel and Arthe C. Perrault as a debutante (1947) on rear panel; a few small nicks and light creasing along edges, and mild shelf and edge wear. Now in an archival quality (removable) Brodart cover. Biography and photographic history of Florestine Perrault Collins (1895-1988), who opened a portrait studio in her New Orleans home in 1920, one of three women photographers in the city at the time, and documented Creole and African American life until 1949. Written by Collins's great-niece, drawing on family records, oral histories recorded from 1977 on, and photographs rescued from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Includes chapters on Creole identity and the color line, Collins learning the trade while passing for white in Canal Street studios, and her studios as Bertrand's, Claiborne and Collins on North Claiborne Avenue and South Rampart Street. Portraits of communions, graduations, weddings, debutantes and Mardi Gras clubs, and hand-colored plates; includes a photograph of Collins with Duke Ellington and a baby portrait of Andrew Young (1935). Collins's photographs are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and were shown in The New Woman Behind the Camera (Metropolitan Museum and National Gallery of Art, 2021-22). Contents: List of Illustrations; Too Black to Be White and Too White to Be Black; "We Got the Hang of It"; "The Moment You're a Creole, It Was la Meme Chose"; "We Couldn't Sit in the Front"; "She Never Went Outside One Day to Work"; "I Tore Out Barefooted, Running down to the Track"; "We Never Bothered about Sex"; "I Don't Remember Her Going Out to Any Public Places"; "Photography Requires Nimble Fingers"; "Persistent Yearnings to Be Free"; Three Prominent Creole Photographers; "I Met Herbert and Fell in Love with Him"; "Everybody Got All Dressed Up and Went to the Studio"; "They Came in Droves"; "She Ran the Business and Took Care of Business"; "Times Were Different Then"; Acknowledgments; Notes; Bibliography; Index.