WHERE WE FIND OURSELVES '
Cámara Oscura Art Gallery presents a solo exhibition of the self-taught American photographer Hugh Mangum curated by Alex Harris and Margaret Sartor. Mangum’s fascinating work has been an exceptional discovery, and today he is considered “the photographer who united America.”
In this historic project we have collaborated with Duke University to bring Mangum’s work to light for the first time in Europe. Following his unexpected death in 1922 at the age of 44, Mangum’s black-and-white glass plate negatives were stored and forgotten in the barn on the family farm in Durham, North Carolina. Doomed for demolition in the 1970s, the barn was saved at the last minute and with it this astonishing and extraordinary document of life from a turbulent time in the history of the American South.
