Where we find ourselves'
Camera Obscura Art Gallery presents a solo exhibition of 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 landmark project we have collaborated with Duke University to bring Mangum's work to light for the first time in Europe. After 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 to demolition in the 1970s, the barn was saved at the last minute and, with it, this astonishing and extraordinary living document of a turbulent era in the history of the American South.
