Black Women Photographers in New Orleans
Photography – as theorized by Roland Barthes in his foundational text Camera Lucida – is a powerful registration of presence and proof of existence. This is especially meaningful to people who had been historically denied visibility. By photographing her community, Collins enabled individuals and families to preserve their heritage, document events of significance, and exercise ownership over their own image. Her images reflect New Negro sentiments of empowerment and respectability. Collins presents herself and her subjects with care: they are beautiful, fashionable, and composed.
Inundated with negative, stereotyped imagery of black people, photography became a powerful tool to counter that imagery. By establishing themselves as artists and professionals, black photographers took control of the camera, which had been weaponized against their communities. African American studio photography flourished from the mid-19th to the early 20th centuries. Co-opting the techniques of white professionals, Black photographers like Collins claimed the authority to represent their own communities.
The hand-colored photographs produced by Black-owned studios uniquely showcase this prioritization of community expression. The meticulous process of painting a photograph by hand – selecting harmonious colors and taking time to accentuate the features of the subject — is a testament to the care with which Black people were treated by the studios that photographed them.
Black and a Woman
Social norms and economic barriers meant that, in the 20th century, very few women and Black individuals – and even fewer black women – could access photographic technology and training. However, compared to older art forms like painting and sculpture, the new medium of photography provided increased opportunities for people of marginalized social identities to become artists and entrepreneurs. In the 1920 United States Census, 101 African-American women were listed as professional photographers.
In the mid-20th century in New Orleans, there were two other prominent Creole photographers in Collins’s social circle: Arthur Paul Bedou and Villard Paddio. Being men, both Bedou and Paddio had the privilege of venturing out of their studios and photographing public spaces.
Confined to commercial portraiture, Collins’s photographs rarely appeared in the Louisiana Weekly, a barrier to more widespread public acclaim. Even her white female counterparts were offered opportunities to advance their careers in non-commercial spheres, by working in museums, institutes, and new government agencies. These intersecting forms of gender and racial oppression prevented many black female photographers from rising to prominence.
Uncovering the Past
Erased from the historic archives, there is a limited record of Creole and African American women in New Orleans who made a living from photography.
Here are a few names we do know:
Amy Jackson (1889-1959)
Jackson was listed in the 1920 Louisiana Census as a maid who worked for a photographer.
Oryana Valentine (1896-unknown)
In 1920, Valentine was a 24-year-old apprentice at a photography studio in New Orleans.
Gladys Williams Perrault (1902-1983)
Gladys Williams Perrault was married to Arthur Perrault, making her the sister-in-law of Florestine Perrault Collins. She owned Perrault’s Photo Studio (later known as Portraits, Inc.) at 434 South Rampart Street.
Irma Lane (1909-unknown)
At 21 years old, Lane did messenger work at a photography studio as indicated by the 1930 Louisiana Census.
Adine McLain (1916-1999)
McLain, born Alma Adine Mitchell, owned a photography studio called Camera Masters on 441 South Rampart Street. Her studio site suffered a similar fate to Collins’s South Rampart studio buildings: it is currently a ground-level parking lot. McLain opened her own studio after divorcing Frederick Allen McLain, who operated an in-home studio in their Bienville Avenue home in the mid-1930s.
Celeste Taylor Broadway (1919-2001)
At 31 years old, she was listed as a proprietor in the photography industry in the 1950 Louisiana Census. Like Collins, whose husband, Herbert, was a postman, Celeste Taylor Broadway’s husband, David, was a mail carrier.
Employer and Protector
Collins empowered her female employees with knowledge, skill, craftsmanship, and employment. Hand-coloring was an important function that supported female employment in her studio. Coloring photographs was a highly gendered practice. An article in The Lady’s Newspaper on hand-coloring marketed the activity to “young lady artists,” claiming it required the “refined manipulation of the female hand.” Color itself was also gendered, associated with femininity and performance.
Collins capitalized on these labor divisions, developing the hand-coloring practice within her studio. Collins recalled training her employees:
“As each new girl came along we had to teach them how to paint… of course, teaching them how to make the pictures wasn’t anything because it was all by machine. All they had to do was turn the crank.”
– Florestine Perrault Collins, quote from Picturing Black New Orleans
Collins attested to the skill that her hand-colorists possessed and the labor they completed in the studio. Phenella DuPlessis Perez remembers painting with “little cotton swabs and watercolor.” Collins charged extra for hand-painting services, compensating these women for their labor and garnering additional support for the business.
Collins brought many young black women directly into the world of photography as her employees. Black men had few employment opportunities, requiring black women to support their families or supplement their husbands’ low salaries by working. In New Orleans, these girls often had to put themselves in dangerous situations to make money. As domestic workers, they risked sexual abuse from employers and some were forced into sex work to make ends meet.
Collins brought her relatives, many of whom were women, into the business. Her younger sister, Mildred Gardina, and her family friend Walterine Celestine, co-managed Collins Studio. They helped get the business off of its feet. Before they opened their own studio, her younger brother, Arthur Perrault, and his wife, Gladys Williams Perrault, worked for Collins. Her other younger sister, Thelma Lombard, was a later addition to the operation as a saleswoman.
Betty Goudeau Wethers, Valrian Burrell Montgomery, and Phenella DuPlessis Perez were all employees of Collins in the 1940s. They remember Collins as an impressive businesswoman who cultivated a positive work environment. She hired not just Creole women, but darker-skinned African Americans, looking out for all of her teenage employees. Montgomery remembers that she joined the studio with no prior experience with photography and Collins trained her. The job allowed her to pay for college.
Image Credits
Bertrand’s Studio Advertisement, from “The Crescent City Pictorial: A Souvenir, Dedicated to the Progress of the Colored Citizens of New Orleans, Louisiana- America’s Most Interesting City,” published by O.C.W. Taylor, 1925, Amistad Research Center.
Image Slider:
- Woman in pearls, photograph by Florestine Perrault Collins, c. 1920-1928, The Historic New Orleans Collection, 2001.79.9.
- Portrait of a young woman and boy dressed in white, photograph by Florestine Perrault Collins, c. 1920-1928, 5 ⅞ x 3 ¼ in, The Historic New Orleans Collection, 2001.79.7.
- Victor Collins, called Payune, photograph by Florestine Perrault Collins, c. 1925-1935, 4 ¾ x 3 ⅛ in, The Historic New Orleans Collection, 2001.79.1.
- Portrait of an African-American woman, possibly Marie Collins, photograph by Florestine Perrault Collins, 1928, 5 ½ x 4 ½ in, The Historic New Orleans Collection, 2001.79.3.
Lydia Sindos as a junior bridesmaid, photograph by Florestine Perrault Collins, 1945, Lydia Sindios Adams Papers, Amistad Research Center at Tulane University.
Booker T. Washington Speaking to Crowd on his Last Tour of Louisiana, photograph by Arthur P. Bedou, 1915, Xavier University Library.
Gladys Williams Perrault, photograph by Florestine Perrault Collins, mid-1920s, courtesy of Dr. Arthé A. Anthony.
Hand-painted portrait of an unidentified woman, photograph by Florestine Perrault Collins, c. 1928-1949, George Lewis collection, MSS 782, Williams Research Center, The Historic New Orleans Collection.