The collection dates from approximately 1890 through 1922, and comprises 937 glass plate negatives and a selection of black-and-white prints, of portraits and scenes taken by Hugh Mangum, a portrait photographer based in Durham, North Carolina. There is also a set of 25 exhibit prints and 25 smaller viewing prints from a 2012 Center for Documentary Studies exhibit curated by a Duke University student.
The images were taken as Mangum traveled a rail circuit through North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia. He also likely took some of these images in the photography studios he and partners established in Roanoke, Pulaski, and East Radford, Virginia. Communities marked on a few of the plates include Warrenton (probably North Carolina rather than Virginia), and Christiansburg, Virginia. Localities known to have been visited by Mangum in N.C. include Winston-Salem, High Point, Raleigh, Reidsville, Lexington, Durham, and Greensboro; in Virginia, Martinsville, East Radford, and Pulaski. From an annotated trunk lid found in the collection it seems he also visited Texas but it is unknown if any of the images in the collection were taken there.
The images are chiefly individual and group portraits of local residents, although there are several town scenes with landmark buildings. There are women, children, and men, either in a studio setting or outdoors; the majority are white but there are many African Americans and people who may be multi-racial. There are buildings such as barns, mills, schools, and houses often present in outdoor group portraits, and dogs, chickens, cats, and horses appear. Sometimes the individual poses with a possession such as a bicycle or musical instrument. One image is of a train accident with a large group of bystanders.
Identification numbers are often stamped or written on the plate. The library staff has assigned unique numbers to each image and plate. There are multiple images of Hugh Mangum and the Mangum and Carden families; see the glass plate negative notes for more details. The last dated print in the collection is a mounted print of Mangum's body in an open casket, 1922.
Mangum photographs are distinctive for the level of comfort exhibited by his subjects in front of the camera. This ease in front of the camera is readily noted due to the large quantity of "penny picture camera" negatives in the collection that contain multiple images of numerous subjects. Often the first picture of a subject appears rather stiff and formal as in traditional nineteenth century photographs. In the second and subsequent pictures, the subject often visibly relaxes, assumes different poses, uses props, removes or adds a hat, and may smile broadly at the camera. This progressive transition in poses from formal to very informal is a hallmark of the Mangum collection. The collection may be of particular interest to researchers studying late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century fashion trends.
The glass plate negatives are closed to use, but researchers may use online digitized images which represent the entirety of the collection of negatives. In addition, the collection also makes available for research use original contact prints, contact sheets, one panoramic print, and print reproductions created for exhibition and other purposes.
Acquired as part of the Archive of Documentary Arts at Duke University.
Hugh Leonard Mangum was born on June 3, 1877 in downtown Durham, N.C., the son of Presley J. Mangum, an early postmaster of Durham and furniture maker, and Sally Mangum. In 1891, the Mangums bought the McCown house at West Point, then a rural community centering on a water mill on the Eno River, and used the home as a summer residence. In 1893, when Hugh Mangum was 16 years old, the Mangum family moved out to the Eno River community permanently. By the time he was 16, Hugh Mangum had taught himself photography. He was also an adept painter in oils and watercolor and could play the mandolin, accordion, and piano. Mangum studied art at Salem College in Winston-Salem, N.C. and studied hypnotism on his own.
From this time on, Mangum led a rambling life throughout the cities and rural areas of the Southeast, photographing blacks and whites, children at play, workers in the field, and scenes around his home by the Eno River. He traveled by train, sometimes on a manually-propelled handcar, on these picture-taking trips, returning often to his family's Durham, N.C. home on the Eno. Through the course of his travels Mangum set up many temporary studios as well as three permanent ones located in the Virginia communities of Roanoke, Pulaski, and East Radford. Ordinary people would walk in wherever Mangum set up his studios and have their pictures made. Mangum also maintained a darkroom at his family's home on the Eno in a packhouse building which has been restored and converted into the Hugh Mangum Museum of Photography. Mangum printed many of his negatives in the packhouse darkroom having exposed the negatives elsewhere, usually on location in his permanent of temporary studios. Mangum used Black Meadow Branch, a small tributary of the Eno, as a water source for chemical mixing and for washing his prints.
Mangum's family included his father, Presley and mother, Sally, and three sisters, one of whom was named Lula. Hugh married Annie Carden of East Radford in 1906 and they had a daughter. On March 12, 1922, at the age of 44, he died in Roanoke, Virginia during an influenza epidemic. One mounted print in the collection is of Mangum in an open casket.
Mangum's original darkroom, a tobacco pack house on the Mangum farm at West Point on the Eno, was saved and restored by The Friends of West Point and opened in 1986 as The Hugh Mangum Museum of Photography. In addition to his darkroom, the museum contains Hugh Mangum's traveling trunk, a selection of vintage prints, prints made from Mangum original negatives in the 1980s by photographer David Page, and period photography equipment.
Processed by Karen Glynn and Peter Hymas, May 2006.
Encoded by Aaron Thornburg, May 2009; Kenneth Dasher, July 2009. Updated by Paula Jeannet, October 2011.
Exhibit prints added to collection by Joanne Fairhurst, February 2013.
New addition processed by Conservation staff and Paula Jeannet, March 2017.
Accessions represented in this collection guide: 1987-0137, 2006-0044, 2006-0123, 2012-0057, 2013-0103, 2014-0079, and 2015-0191.
No Copyright - United States