Booker T. Washington in New Orleans circa 1915 (or possibly Mound Bayou). Photo by Black New Orleans photographer Arthur P. Bedou.

I am working on a major project: SEEING BLACK–Photography In New Orleans 1840 And Beyond.

Photography was developed in France in 1839. Jules Lion, a free man of color, born in France but domiciled in New Orleans, happened to be in France in 1839. When he returned home, Lion who was a lithographer and painter, produced an exhibition of photography. This was only the second presentation of photography in the United States. The first had been about six months earlier in New York.

Although internationally known for music and food, New Orleans is also a major center of photography.

We have assembled a four-member team led by Kalamu ya Salaam, composed of Eric Waters, Shana griffin, and Girard Mouton. We will feature both historic and contemporary photographers. I am especially smitten by the work of Arthur P. Bedou. He was the last official personal photographer of Booker T. Washington for approximately five years up to Washington’s death.

George Washington Carver. Photo by Black New Orleans photographer Arthur P. Bedou.

Below is the working introduction to the project.

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Sight and Sound. Our eyes, our ears, the major senses that enable our appreciation of the world within which we live. These two senses also shape our humanity.

Many consider them twins, but are they? The truth is that sound shapes our understanding more than does sight. Try watching a video with the sound turned off. Then experience that same video without watching the screen. Lost of sight is less debilitating, less disorienting than is being unable to hear.

Simple. We lose a lot when we can’t see, but when we can’t hear, our humanity is totally challenged. Why? Because for we humans, language is essential communication. Both ways. From the world that surrounds us comes sensations and information that not only informs us about our environment; received information also shapes our individual humanity.

Moreover, we use language to tell the world who we are, as well as to shape the world within which we live. Language is the ultimate means of shaping and sharing our humanity.

Plus, we listen, we talk, and, if literate, we also read and write. Listen. Talk. Read. Write. The completeness and complexity of our existence. Each of the fundamental quartet has its own essentiality, its own strengths, and yes, its own weaknesses or limitations.

Certainly it is true, human beings did not always read and write, nor, for that matter, did we talk. First we listened. Then we made sounds to ourself, and normally we then began to learn how to talk with others. Check Russian social scientist Lev Vygotsky and his theory about social learning.

I realize this is ostensibly about photography, and one doesn’t listen to a photograph, but my point is that to get to the place where sight makes sense we usually must pass through the realm of sound. Of course, there are occasional birth or accidental deficiencies which limit, or even eliminate, our ability to hear. In such cases development can happen but it is more difficult and requires, much more assistance from others in our environment.

However, when we are born, unless there is a deficiency at birth, we can all hear. Even before we learn to see and certainly long before we are able to understand what we see. Even see our birth mothers. We heard mother, or at least felt the vibrations of her voice, her breathing, her being, and to a lesser degree in the later stages of our fetal development, we picked up vibrations from beyond the personage and personality of our mother. Especially music, probability well before we were born we were predisposed to dance, to move in synch with the rhythms penetrating the womb.