From September 2022 to June 2023, the “Visions of Progress: Portraits of Dignity, Style, and Racial Uplift” exhibition at the University of Virginia brought 180 portraits of Black Charlottesville-area residents from the turn of the 20th Century that had previously been buried in an archive, to the public.
The exhibition was temporary, but a new print catalog — which includes a selection of the portraits, biographies of some of the subjects, and contextualizing essays — makes it last.
The “Visions of Progress” catalog will be released on Saturday, Oct. 25 at 3 p.m. at the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library Central Branch. Anyone who wants one can get one, said exhibition curator and UVA history professor John Edwin Mason. The catalogs will be given away for free, and will be available in public libraries throughout the area.
“My hope is that 65 years from now, when some 8th grader is assigned to do a project on the history of Charlottesville, she finds the catalog, and her eyes are opened,” Mason said. She stands to learn that yes, the portraits were taken during the Jim Crow era, but that was also the New Negro era — a time when Black people were working hard to uplift the race economically, educationally, and in terms of the rights of citizenship.
“We know it can literally change the way that people see the history of this region,” he added.
Read more on how in this 2022 report on the portrait exhibition.
Though Mason is thrilled to get the catalog out to a wider audience, its release is bittersweet, he said. He regrets that local civil rights activist and community leader Eugene Wiliams, who passed away last weekend at age 97, won’t be there to celebrate it.
Williams told Mason something that changed the curator’s understanding of how the Holsinger studio — which was white-owned and served Black and white clients — operated.
Horace Porter, whose portrait is among the 180 included in the exhibition, started out as a janitor at the studio. He later ran the darkroom, doing all of the developing and printing for the studio.
Porter married Viola Green — the young woman who stood for a graduation photo — and together they had eight children.
How did Williams know? He and Porter had been colleagues at the studio.
Take action
Learn more about the history of Charlottesville on Saturday, Oct. 25
The Holsinger Studio Portrait Project releases the “Visions of Progress” exhibition catalog Saturday, Oct. 25 from 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library Central Branch, located at 201 E. Market St., Charlottesville. The event is free and open to the public, but those who register are guaranteed a free catalog. Register to attend here.
Learn more about the Holsinger Studio Portrait Project, including the people who sat for portraits, on the project website.
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