Hugh Mangum is an American photographer, known for portraits of people from USA south. He is particularly known for portraits of African Americans at the time, when Jim Crow laws didn't allow a lot of them being photographed.
Biography
Hugh Leonard Mangum was born June 3, 1877 on Main Street in Durham, son of, Presley J. Mangum, a Durham postmaster, and Sally Mangum nee Farhting. In 1891, Mangum's father bought the McCown House at ‘West Point on the Eno”. They used the house as a summer home for two years and moved to the Eno permanently in 1893. Hugh Mangum married Annie Carden of East Radford, Virginia in 1906. They have one son who didn't survive the infancy and one daughter together. Hugh Mangum died of pneumonia on March 12, 1922, at the age of 44.
Mangum used Penny Picture portrait camera. He took his first photo in Durham in 1897. He supposedly violated the “black codes” in many places he visited by welcoming white and black sitters to share the same studio.
Exhibitions
2012 "Keep All You Wish: The Photographs of Hugh Mangum," curated by Sarah Stacke for the
2014 "Hugh Mangum on Main Street," curated by Sarah Stacke for the
2015 "Keep All You Wish: The Photographs of Hugh Mangum," curated by Sarah Stacke for the
2019 "Where We Find Ourselves: The Photographs of Hugh Mangum, 1897 – 1922". Nasher Museum of Art.
Collections
After Hugh Mangum's death in 1922 from flu complications, his glass plate negatives remained stored in his studio in a tobacco barn. Mangum relatives turned the barn into a henhouse and toolshed. His negatives were buried under junk and chicken shit. In 1970s the negatives were moved to greenhouse of Hugh's nephew. They were given to Duke University by Association for the Preservation of the Eno River Valley in nineteen-eighties. The collection is preserved in the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library of the University. The collection of Mangum's prints, as well as his equipment is in the collection of Hugh Mangum Museum of Photography in Durham, North Carolina.
