Photos Day or Night: The Archive of Hugh Mangum is a close-up look at the life and work of American photographer Hugh Mangum. The book features photographs and ephemera from the Mangum family archive.
Mangum worked in North Carolina and the Virginias at the turn of the 20th century. A businessman and artist who supported his family, he welcomed clients from across racial and economic divides. The archive he left behind allows a penetrating gaze into the segregated South during Redemption and Jim Crow, the turbulent and far-reaching eras that bolstered white supremacy after the Civil War’s Reconstruction period. Mangum’s archive also encompasses World War I, women’s suffrage, and early legislation aimed at immigrants and Native Americans.
Notably, Mangum often used a camera designed to allow multiple and distinct exposures on a single glass-plate negative. The resulting sequences mirror the order in which Mangum’s diverse clientele appeared before his lens on a particular day. After entering Mangum’s studio, people sat resolutely, curiously, gracefully, dreamily, and politely while anticipating the click of the camera’s shutter. Many played—Mangum encouraged it. And there were those who sought a portrait because, despite living in a time full of restrictions, many of which were enforced with violence, they believed in a life without limits. A photograph was one way to divine a fragment of that life, whether it was social mobility, unrestricted love, equality, or whatever “limitless” meant to someone. In Mangum’s archive, boundaries—in life and in photographic space — are blurred, subverted, defied, and overthrown.
Published by Red Hook Editions, 2018
Design by Bonnie Briant
Texts by Maurice Wallace, Martha Sumler, and Sarah Stacke
Hardcover
10″ x 10″
128 images
ISBN 978-1-941703-08-3