“Cameras gave to black folks, irrespective of our class, a means by which we could participate fully in the production of images.”
Art on My Mind: Visual Politics. The New Press, 1995, p. 57
What began as a small project to digitize my family’s archive as a favor — while peering into the records of ordinary Black life in South Mississippi — quickly became something else. It was a reckoning with my sense of self.
One of my aunts unearthed old cardboard boxes and placed them on her kitchen table for me to explore. As I dug through, it was clear that I was facing relics that needed to see the light. This contact with our memories felt like an initiation into my responsibility as a keeper of a torch, silently passed with the weight of generations.
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I found newspaper clippings and wedding napkins dated to the ’80s and awards and mementos from the ’90s. Then this image surfaced. It felt older than anything else I had seen so far, and the material it was printed on was way more delicate. On the back, it was stamped with a name, a date, and a place.
Who is she? The heavy contrast of her accessories against the softness of the suit and stockings. Poised and polished, balanced at the edge of the bench.
On the back: The Henley Residence Studio. Jan 17, 1937. 416 Forest Street, Hattiesburg, Miss. Phone 1850.
D.B. Henley, a Black photographer with a studio in Hattiesburg, took many of the early photographs of life in South Mississippi. The Henley Residence Studio was a home, a studio and sanctuary. When he passed away in 1944, his funeral services were held at Henley Residence Studio.
A home-based studio was common during that era, especially among African-American photographers who often worked from their residences due to segregation and limited access to commercial spaces. Henley’s studio’s tenure, near Hattiesburg’s Mobile Street District in the Jim Crow years, likely served as an oasis of autonomy and self-representation.
I feel a connection to Henley in that my camera is a tool for preservation. As a photographer, I’ve always been drawn to making images of Black women. It isn’t just about documentation. A large part of my practice centers around capturing the exhale — quiet, unperformed moments when peace is found in solitude and safely. When presence isn’t about presentation, but simply being.
In my family’s archive, there were three other women’s portrait sessions at the Henley Residence Studio. In one of them, the subject is even sitting on the same bench. This cache of images revealed a ritual in black and white.
When I see their gazes meeting the camera lens, I see agency and a refusal to disappear. Almost 90 years after their images were made, I find myself returning to these women often, searching for pieces of myself in their faces, grounding myself in their fixed expressions, while I waver.
Excavating what remains of my family during this place in time has forced me to slow down and let a different curiosity bloom. Why did they return to the bench?
Guided by the legacies of 19th-century trailblazers, they entered into a tradition of resistance. These women and D.R. Henley preserved history while continuing the work of resilience and visual authority.
Even when policy delayed freedom, the recognition and proof of emancipation could prevail through portraiture. Mrs. Emma Lee, my great-grandmother, left this world in 1991, years before I ever drew my first breath. A Mississippi daughter who safeguarded what the world tried to forget. When I was born in 1995, the state hadn’t yet ratified the 13th Amendment of the United State Constitution, delaying the acknowledgement of our freedom. For a place like Mississippi, Juneteenth is not about what was gained, but what was withheld.
As a photographer, my journey continues. I have an upcoming visit to the University of Southern Mississippi to view three additional portraits made in Henley’s studio. Then I will travel to Atlanta to sit with my great-aunt Ebbie Williams, who’s kept images of herself and my grandmother, Brenda Rogers-Hawthrone, that I’m hoping speak to their girlhood in the Mississippi Delta.
It’s easy to see that the images reflect people who were not simply parts of an archive, but witnesses to what our family did to survive. Holding their gaze, I question what it means to be someone’s future.
Ariel J. Cobbert is a visual artist in Memphis. Contact Ariel on her website,arieljcobbert.com.
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