Image credit: Hooks Brothers Studio, Bessie Coleman, 1922, Memphis, TN. Digital scan from original gelatin dry plate negative. Promised Gift to the Memphis Art Museum (formerly Memphis Brooks Museum of Art) from the Rodney and Andrea Herenton Collection. 

Black Portraiture[s] : Memphis

Portals and Presence of the Studio 

Memphis, Tennessee, April 22 – 24, 2027

Hosted by the Memphis Art Museum + the National Civil Rights Museum

Guest Organizers: C. Rose Smith, Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, and Mecca Brooks

Call for Papers, Panels, and Presentations: SUBMIT HERE

Deadline for submissions: September 15, 2026 

Notice of acceptance: November 1, 2026

• We invite proposals from scholars, artists, photographers, curators, cultural organizers, and community custodians. In keeping with the conference’s commitment to intergenerational dialogue, we welcome traditional academic papers alongside diverse, practice-based presentation formats.

This iteration of Black Portraiture[s] convenes for the first time in the American South, bringing together an intergenerational gathering of pioneering photographers, scholars, curators, and thinkers to explore the enduring legacy and expansive futures of Black photographic practices. Coinciding with what is widely recognized as the bicentennial of the world’s earliest surviving permanent photograph, made in 1827 by French photographer Nicéphore Niépce, this conference centers the studio not merely as a physical space, but as an archive of possibility and a sacred sanctuary where identities are imagined, worlds are conjured, and history is reclaimed.

Anchored in the historic landscape of Memphis, Tennessee, this year’s convening is conceptually grounded by the monumental Hooks Brothers Studio Collection. From 1907 to 1984, the studio created an unparalleled visual record of Black life, middle-class excellence, resistance, and self-determination in the Mid-South. Taking place during this bicentennial year, the conference offers a timely opportunity to examine this repository of community memory as our north star, exploring how the Black photographic studio has historically functioned — and continues to evolve today — as a vital site of visual refuge, experimentation, and historical repair.

Please note that, as with most academic conferences, we are unable to provide institutional funding for travel, participation or presenting​. 

Topics to Consider: 

Newspaper Archives | The Black Press and Publishing | The Portrait Studio: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow | From the Studio to the Street – Mobilizing Practice | Fashioning Identity – Photography & the Power of Dress | Black Family Archives / Stories in the Archives | Contemporary Diasporic Images | Legacies of African Photographers | Black Music and Publicity Photographs | Queer Lives and Identities | Caribbean and Latin American Stories in View | Women & Photography 19th and 20th Century | Memphis Photography | Photography Collectives | Mentorship and Collaboration | Conservation Initiatives (Fisk and Winterthur) | Extending the format: exhibitions, photobooks, and zines | Early processes in photography revisited | Knowledge of Self: The Photographer as Sitter | Black Image Makers in 200 Years of Photography | The Digital Studio and Future Technologies | The Expansive American South 

Questions: blackportraituresmemphis@gmail.com

Black Portraiture[s] : Memphis is a collaboration that is proudly sponsored by: the Memphis Art Museum; the National Civil Rights Museum; the Department of Photography & Imaging, NYU; the Center for Black Visual Culture, NYU; the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, Harvard University.