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This Photography Studio Captured the Beauty of Black Life in the South. Soon Its Archive, Once Hidden Away, Will Have a New Museum Home
Key takeaways
- Christian Thorsberg | Daily Correspondent
- Hooks, and then by their sons, the business ran from different locations across the city during much of the Jim Crow era.
- Church was born into slavery in the 1830s, the son of a white man who worked as a steamboat captain and an enslaved Black woman who worked as a seamstress.
Christian Thorsberg | Daily Correspondent
Add as preferred source. A black-and-white photograph from the 1910s of a girl named Gladys by Hooks Brothers Studio in Memphis Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture When the Memphis Art Museum opens its massive flagship building to the public later this year, a special exhibition will serve as the inaugural centerpiece: “Making Beauty: Hooks Brothers Studio, 1907-1984,” a show dedicated to the eponymous Black-owned photography studio that documented life in the city’s African American community during much of the 20th century.
Owned and operated by brothers Henry A. Hooks Sr. and Robert B. Hooks, and then by their sons, the business ran from different locations across the city during much of the Jim Crow era. While the studio’s portraits included prominent figures such as educator Booker T. Washington and millionaire Robert R. Church, the majority of its frames featured everyday people celebrating graduations, weddings, sporting events and parties.