Photos Day or Night: The Archive of Hugh Mangum
by Sarah Stacke, with texts by Maurice Wallace and Martha Sumler

We are proud and excited to present an intimate look at the life and work of early 20th century American photographer Hugh Mangum. The book was made in close collaboration with Mangum’s granddaughter, Martha Sumler, and features never-before-seen photographs and ephemera from their family archive.

Born in 1877, the year the Civil War’s Reconstruction period ended, Mangum died in 1922, only three years after the First World War and two years after women gained the right to vote. During his lifetime the final battles of the Indian Wars were waged and the first law limiting the number of immigrants allowed in the U.S. was passed. The personalities in Mangum’s images collectively, and often majestically, symbolize the triumphs and struggles of this pivotal era. An itinerant photographer primarily working in his home state of North Carolina and the Virginias, Mangum attracted clientele from across racial and economic divides. Though the American South of his era was marked by disenfranchisement, segregation, and inequality, Mangum portrayed all his sitters with candor and heart. Above all, he showed them as individuals. A century after their making, Mangum’s photographs allow us a penetrating gaze into faces of the past, and in a larger sense, they offer an unusually insightful glimpse of the South at the turn of the twentieth century. As Maurice Wallace writes, Mangum’s photographs keep “a record of the truth of the South’s intimate racial landscape” that “flies in the face of the black and white social life that official tellings of Southern history inspire.”

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” personally meant to someone. In Mangum’s archive, boundaries — in life and in photographic space — are blurred, subverted, defied and overthrown. After all, being seen is what begins a revolution.

In the years Stacke has spent with the Mangum Collection –– imagining the distinct personalities and lives, their relationships to each other and to Mangum –– the collection has evolved to represent a family album to her. Not only as its own entity, unfurled by the welcoming and harmonious spirit of Hugh Mangum, but also in the way she’s formed relationships with the images and individuals in them.

Sarah Stacke is a photographer and archive investigator based in Brooklyn, New York. She has a master’s degree from Duke University tailored to analyze the history of photographic representations. (’12, M.A. in Liberal Studies, concentrations in African and African American Studies and Documentary Studies). As a graduate student, Sarah extensively researched Hugh Mangum’s archive and her thesis culminated in the curation of the first-ever solo exhibition of Mangum’s work, which was shown at Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies in 2012. Shortly thereafter she wrote pieces for The New York Times and Aperture about Mangum and curated a major solo installation of his work at the Asheville Art Museum. Sarah is an adjunct faculty member at the International Center of Photography where she teaches a course about the role archives play in society.

In her photography work, Sarah creates long-term projects in dialogue with people and communities. Her work seeks to share stories, often untold, that bring a solutions-focused balance to the narratives of underrepresented people and places. She is particularly interested in relationships to the land and its boundaries. Sarah is a co-founder of The 400 Years Project, a photography collective looking at the evolution of Native American identity, rights, and representation.

Sarah’s personal and assignment work has appeared in National Geographic, The New York Times, NPR, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and BuzzFeed, among others.

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Photos Day or Night: The Archive of Hugh Mangum is also available as a Special Edition (185 USD/Euro) that includes a choice from two images from Mangum’s private family archive. Both have been recently reprinted in an edition of 50 each at our traditional black-and-white darkroom in Brooklyn, New York, one from the original glass plate negative. 8 x 10 archival silver-gelatin, fiber-based print; choice of one of the two below:

Photos Day or Night: The Archive of Hugh Mangum — Book Specifications:
by Sarah Stacke, with texts by Maurice Wallace and Martha Sumler, Hugh Mangum’s granddaughter
Hardcover
160 pages
10″ x 10″
ISBN 978-1-941703-08-3