Races, Negroes: United States. Virginia. Hampton. Hampton Normal and Industrial School: Agencies Promoting Assimilation of the Negro: Training for Commercial and Industrial Employment. Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, Hampton, Va.: Basket Making. 1899 - 1900

Curator: Frances Benjamin Johnston’s photograph, simply titled "Basket Making," captures a student at the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute. The composition strikes me as particularly well-balanced. Editor: There’s an unsettling contrast between the ordered, almost sterile environment and the supposed uplift this commercial training offers to Black students. Curator: Note how Johnston uses light and shadow to direct our gaze to the subject’s hands and the emerging form of the basket. It's an intriguing study of craft. Editor: The image presents a very specific, assimilationist narrative, erasing cultural identity in the name of industrial advancement. The composition, then, reinforces that narrative. Curator: I find the photograph’s focus on texture—the weave of the basket against the smooth fabric of the dress—rather compelling. Editor: And I see the photograph as yet another example of institutional control masked as opportunity, which invites us to interrogate the photographer's role in reinforcing power structures. Curator: A focused meditation on form, ultimately. Editor: Indeed, but within a disquieting historical context.