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

Looking Ahead to Memphis 2027!

Our Call for Proposals has officially closed. We extend our deepest gratitude to the scholars, artists, archivists, and cultural stewards who submitted their work for consideration for this historic gathering.

As we finalize the conference program, we invite you to join our mailing list to be the first to know conference updates, programming announcements, when attendee registration opens! 

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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.

Black Portraiture[s]: Memphis reflects a global Black framework. We are honored to convene scholars, artists, archivists, and cultural stewards exploring the diverse histories, archives, and contemporary realities of people of African descent worldwide.

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.