H. Polk was an African American photographer born in 1989 in Bessemer, Alabama, he first became involved with photographed after he heard C.M.Battley, who was the head of Tuskegee’s Photography Department, who later became his mentor. He was speaking that the potential of the field and was encouraging students to come and see if they had any interest in the subject. After this meeting Polk went up to Chicago to further his study photography with his blessing. Hw then return to his home town and open his own studio and then took over as the head of Tuskegee photography department. In which he documented many critical moments in the civil rights movements on the campus. In much of his early worked he was photoghing his subjects on a  Kodak box camera with a Graphex lens, in which he has been praised by credits for his technical mastery of the medium but not having the best equipment . His book Through These Eyes: The Photographs of P.H. Polk is a collection of over 100 hundred photographs that depict southern life in all of its different forms, the images range from African/ American George Washington Carver , to images of the farmers working the lads the the cotton field of Macon County, these collection of images are essential in my eyes, in showing the differences of how African/ Americans saw one other, to how white Americans saw them.  He photographed a range of African/ American subjects such as George Washington to poor working class citizens. One of his most influential series, ‘Old Characters’, in which he documented ex-slaves from Macon County.

One of the reasons that I decided to pick P.H.Plok as one of my photographs to references is because of that way that he documented African Americans. In his images they are presented with class, dignity, and humanity. When compared to the first documentation of African Americans, in which they are shown as specitls of nature, and photographed as freaks of nature who need to be studied, shows a great compassion in how the civil rights movement many fret changes in America. This image was taken in 1932 it is entitled ‘The Boss’ In the image looks as if it was taken in a studio using artificial lighting that looks to be coming from the left hand side of the frame.The woman in the frame who looks to be from the working class from the look of what she is wearing, has been positioned powerful stance with her hands on her hips. It looks as if the camera was taken from a lower angle as the woman in the frame is looking down into the frame, which is in turn giving her the power. She is looking directly down the lens to the viewer which, draws the onlooker into the image makes the images more personal.