Thursday, February 23, 2012

Maryland Historical Society: Help wanted in identifying subjects in exhibit of Paul Henderson's photographs - baltimoresun.com

Maryland Historical Society: Help wanted in identifying subjects in exhibit of Paul Henderson's photographs - baltimoresun.com: Images of nearly 6,000 Baltimoreans are the life's work of a photographer who documented racial segregation and early civil rights protests, and also captured candid moments of now-anonymous brides, classmates, football players and black residents of the city.

But while Paul S. Henderson left what Maryland Historical Society curator Jennifer Ferretti calls an "unparalleled visual record of civil rights in Baltimore," he didn't leave behind captions.

The names of his subjects aren't known, as Henderson didn't keep written files — or they didn't survive. Ferretti says it is time, a half-century later, to put names to the unidentified faces in the photographic negatives taken by Henderson, a black Baltimore commercial and news photographer active from about 1929 to 1960. And she's enlisting the public's help.