African American Family Life and Domestic Culture Vernacular Photo Album 1940s to 1950s

African American Family Life Photography

Photograph

Unidentified compiler, photograph album pages, 1940s to 1950s, documenting African American family life across domestic, social, and community settings in the mid-twentieth-century United States. The material provides primary visual evidence of kinship structures, self-presentation, and everyday experience, supporting research into African American social history, family dynamics, and cultural expression during a period shaped by wartime and postwar transitions. The images collectively present a sustained view of one family’s lived experience across multiple environments including home, church, school, and leisure spaces.

Archive of 27 original silver gelatin photographs mounted on seven black album pages. The photographs depict a range of individuals and groupings, including couples, siblings, children, and extended family members. One sequence shows a young couple posed formally, the woman’s engagement ring visible, followed by a second image of the pair in a close embrace turned away from the camera, suggesting both public presentation and private intimacy. Another grouping of five photographs presents four women posed individually before a house, each facing the camera with similar posture and expression, indicating familial resemblance and coordinated self-presentation. Additional images include family scenes with small children, a man in a suit and hat posed beside the polished hood of an automobile, and a line of women in tailored suits and hats dressed for an outing. A photograph of a woman seated on a small pier, her hair blown back as she looks toward the water, bears the inscription “To Mary, Sincerely, Gladys,” indicating personal exchange and memory-making within the album’s compilation.

27 photographs mounted on seven pages measuring approximately 14 x 11 inches; individual photographs range from approximately 3.25 x 4 inches to 3 x 2.5 inches. Mid-twentieth-century vernacular photography of African American families contributes to the documentation of everyday life beyond institutional archives, capturing moments of aspiration, stability, and interpersonal connection during decades marked by migration and social change. Light sunning visible on some images, mounts stable and photographs clear; overall very good condition. A cohesive family-centered visual record illustrating African American domestic and social life in the 1940s and 1950s.

Item #18202

Price: $425.00