Women of Color

Hand-Coloring and the Studios of Florestine Perrault Collins

I found Florestine Perrault Collins (1895-1988) in my first year of undergraduate studies, researching the hand-painted photography produced by African-American communities. I discovered a wealth of hand-colored portraits featured in the book Picturing Black New Orleans, written by the photographer and studio-owner’s grand-niece, Dr. Arthé Anthony. This summer, I renewed my research on Collins as an Underrepresented Artists’ Historic Sites Research Intern at HAHS, focusing on space, historic preservation, and uncovering the stories of black women who worked in the photography industry in early 20th century New Orleans. Throughout the process, I kept coming back to this question:

How can exploring the work, space, and life of one photographer illuminate the story of an entire community?

As I researched Florestine Perrault Collins, I didn’t just absorb the facts of her life. I learned what it was like to walk down the street in New Orleans in the 20th century. I was astonished by the artistry and care that goes into producing a studio photograph. I uncovered the lives of young Black women whose names had been lost to history.

This is why, to me, Collins’s story is a story of community.

Collins was a professional photographer and studio owner in New Orleans. Born into a large Catholic Creole family, she began working at 14 to support herself and her family. She began her career as a clerk for a white photographer and eventually expanded her practice, opening her own studio, first in her living room and then in a commercial space. From 1920 to 1949, Collins photographed the Creole and African American community in New Orleans, remaining popular through the Great Depression.

She created dignified portraits that commemorated family gatherings, school graduations, weddings, communions, Mardi Gras celebrations, and other special occasions. Many of these photographs were meticulously hand-painted with color, often by the Black women who worked for her. Historically, this practice has been overlooked as trivial labor. However, these hand-colored photographs serve as a testament to the care with which she handled her subjects and the vitality of the community she photographed.

This project will highlight the hand-colored photographs produced under Collins’ direction, along with her studio spaces and the preservation of her life work and story. Telling this history is critical, not just to elevate Florestine Perrault Collins’s contributions as a Black woman to photography, but to uplift the legacies of the Creole and African American communities who patronized, worked for, and were photographed in her studios.

Community Spaces

Historic Preservation in New Orleans

Discover the community spaces and studios where Florestine Perrault Collins worked and the efforts to preserve this history.

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Breaking Barriers

The Life and Business of Florestine Perrault Collins

Life and Business

Read about the life and business of Florestine Perrault Collins.

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Women of/in Color

Hand-Painted Photography

Take a closer look at the people captured in Florestine Perrault Collins’ hand-colored photographs and the hand-painting techniques used at the time.

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Claiming the Camera

Black Women Photographers in New Orleans

Learn more about the Black professional photographers in New Orleans, as well as the retouchers, colorists, and other photo artists that Collins employed in her studios.

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Acknowledgements

I want to extend my deepest gratitude to Girard Mouton III, whose generosity, knowledge, and guidance were invaluable as I navigated Louisiana census records, city directories, and property history documents for the first time. I would also like to thank Katherine Cecil, Greg Beaman, Shana M. griffin, and everyone at the Claiborne Ave History Project for their kindness in sharing research and connecting me with scholars dedicated to historic preservation work in New Orleans.

This work would not be possible without the incredible work of Dr. Arthé A. Anthony, whose book was critical to my research and who is largely responsible for the preservation of the life story and photographs of her great-aunt, Florestine Perrault Collins.

Thank you to Professor Grigsby, whose teaching and research on hand-painted photography inspired my own. Thank you also to Valerie and Kat, who supported me as I deepened my research on Florestine Perrault Collins’s studio locations and designed this webpage.

Julia Angel

Julia Angel is a fourth-year student at UC Berkeley, majoring in Art History and Spanish and minoring in Human Rights. This summer, she was also the Education Intern at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC. In Berkeley, Julia works with the postcard collection at the Magnes Museum of Jewish Art and Culture and teaches art classes to elementary schoolers. Julia enjoys artmaking in all forms, but particularly loves watercolor painting outside.

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Published Sources (Books and Journals)

Anthony, Arthé A. “Florestine Perrault Collins and the Gendered Politics of Black Portraiture in 1920s New Orleans.” Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 43, no. 2 (2002): 167–88. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4233837.

Anthony, Arthé A. Picturing Black New Orleans: A Creole Photographer’s View of the Early Twentieth Century. University Press of Florida, 2012.

Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Wang, 1981.

Batchelor, David. Chromophobia, London: Reaktion, 2000.

Berry, Jason. “Visions of Early Rampart Street: The Photographs of Florestine Perrault Collins.” New Orleans Magazine, February 2013, 40–42. https://web-s-ebscohost-com.libproxy.berkeley.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=0&sid=63880d60-aaac-4e7c-9964-8ec20d839f3e%40redis.

Brady, Emily. “‘Shutterbug?’: Black Women Photographers and the Politics of Self-Representation.” Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art, Producing and Consuming the Image of the Female Artist, 9, no. 1 (Spring 2023). https://journalpanorama.org/article/producing-and-consuming/shutterbug/.

“Colouring Photographs. – No. I.” The Lady’s Newspaper & Pictorial Times (London), January 31, 1863. In Lindsay Smith. Color and Victorian Photography. London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020, 151-155.

Dickens, Charles, conducted. “Those Who Live in Glass Houses.” All the Year Round: A Weekly Journal XII, no. 292 (November 26, 1864): 372–74.

Gaines, Kevin K. Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century. University of North Carolina Press, 1996.

Grigsby, Darcy Grimaldo. “Creole Degas.” In Creole: Portraits of France’s Foreign Relations During the Long Nineteenth Century. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University, 2022.

Lopez-Diago, Zoraida, and Lesly Deschler Canossi. Black Matrilineage, Photography, and Representation: Another Way of Knowing. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2022. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/book.102917.

Palmquist, Peter E. “Pioneer Women Photographers in Nineteenth-Century California.” California History 71, no. 1 (1992): 110–27. https://doi.org/10.2307/25158613.

Patterson, Sala Elise. “A Look Back at the Importance of Black American Studio Photography through the Decades.” British Journal of Photography, December 14, 2022. https://www.1854.photography/2022/12/a-look-back-at-the-importance-of-black-american-studio-photography-through-the-decades/.

Raiford, Leigh. “Photography and the Practices of Critical Black Memory.” History and Theory 48, no. 4 (December 2009): 112–29. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25621443.

Wall, Alfred H. A Manual of Artistic Colouring, as Applied to Photographs: A Practical Guide to Artists and Photographers. London: Thomas Piper, 1861.Willis, Deborah. “Encounters with Color Photography,” in Bettina Gockel, ed. The Colors of Photography. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020, 73-93.

Online Resources

Records

Images

Florestine Perrault Collins, unidentified photographer, 1920s, silver gelatin print, 14 x 11 in, courtesy of Dr. Arthé A. Anthony.

Germaine Gardina, Florestine’s niece, photograph by Florestine Perrault Collins, mid-1930s, courtesy of Dr. Arthé A. Anthony.

Covers

Community Spaces: Up N. Claiborne at Ursuline (Detail), photograph by Arvin Frank Pelle, 1947, Charles L. Franck Studio Collection at The Historic New Orleans Collection, 1979.325.5135.
Breaking Barriers: Florestine Marguerite Perrault (Detail), unidentified photographer, early 1910s, courtesy of Dr. Arthé A. Anthony.
Women of/in Color: Lorraine McCarthy and Morris Labostrie Wedding (Detail), photograph by Florestine Perrault Collins, mid-1920s, by permission of Sonja McCarthy, courtesy of Dr. Arthé A. Anthony.
Claiming the Camera: Bertrand’s Studio Advertisement (Detail), 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.