John Edwin Mason – författare

A timely reconsideration of the history of photography that places Black studio photographers, and their subjects, at the centerFrom photography’s beginnings in the United States, Black studio photographers operated on the developing edge of popular media to produce affirming portraits for their clients, as well as a wide range of photographic work rooted in their communities. Called to the Camera offers a comprehensive history of this work, from the nineteenth-century daguerreotypes of James Presley Ball to the height of Black studios in the mid-twentieth century, and considers contemporary photographers responding to Black studio traditions today. In addition to showcasing famous photographers such as Ball, James Van Der Zee, and Addison Scurlock, this volume brings attention to dozens of other artists across the country, including Florestine Perrault Collins, Austin Hansen, and Henry Clay Anderson. The book features more than one hundred extraordinary vintage photographs, many of them unique objects and some, like those by the Hooks Brothers Studio, published here for the first time. Highlighting Black subjects on both sides of the camera, Called to the Camera presents a broader and more inclusive history of photography.Distributed for the New Orleans Museum of ArtExhibition Schedule:New Orleans Museum of Art(September 15, 2022–January 8, 2023)

What was it like to be a slave in colonial South Africa? What difference did freedom make? The questions themselves are simply put, but John Edwin Mason has found complex answers after delving deeply into the slaves' experience within the slaveholding patriarchal household, the work that slaves performed, the families they created, and the religions they practiced. Grounding his analysis within the context of South Africa's incorporation into the British Empire - primarily examining the period of 1820-50 - Mason investigates a wealth of documentation from the British Colony of the Cape of Good Hope. Colonial officials, particularly the slave protectors, created and preserved a rich archive within which the voices of slaves and slaveholders, free blacks, and poor whiles are recorded, and from which Mason presents vividly descriptive and telling accounts of slave life. In Social Death and Resurrection Mason draws upon Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson's theory that a slave's social degradation rendered him socially dead. ""Social death"" defined slavery in the ideal, slavery as it would have been had the slaves played along. But in colonial South Africa slaves did not play along: they fought the lash and resisted domination, retaining a cultural and moral community of their own. Mason investigates the subsequent ""resurrection"" of slaves following their successful struggle to preserve family, faith, community ties, and human dignity, despite their class domination and racial subjugation by slaveowners. Although slavery officially came to an end with a series of reforms during a mid-nineteenth-century period of modernization and reform, the British colonial state's commitment to formal equality was in fact compatible with continued class domination. As a result, slaves did not entirely cease to be slaves, but through their own efforts and some governmental assistance, they achieved at least a partial victory over slavery's violence, marginalization, and degradation.

One Love, Ghoema Beat: Inside the Cape Town Carnival takes readers behind the scenes of one of the world’s least known and most colorful carnivals. Similar in many ways to Mardi Gras in New Orleans and Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, the Cape Town Carnival is unique in its history, which is rooted in South Africa’s troubled past, and in its music, which is propelled by the mesmerizing ghoema beat.In 2006, historian and photographer John Edwin Mason joined the Pennsylvanians Crooning Minstrels, one of the best known of Cape Town’s sixty-plus Carnival troupes. For the next four seasons, he took part in the troupe’s rehearsals, street marches, and competitions. He also spent time with other troupes, getting to know their members and traditions. This unprecedented access allowed him to photograph every phase of the troupe’s life—the spectacular parades and grueling late-night practice sessions, the frenetic workshops of drum makers and tailors, the rituals of donning costumes and makeup, and the joy and agony of inter-troupe competitions. His photos simultaneously dazzle the eye and engage the mind.Mason lived in Cape Town in 1989 and 1990 and has visited the city yearly ever since. One Love, Ghoema Beat is his second book about the city’s culture and history.

The first book on Peruvian-American artist Andrea Morales, whose photographs honor her community and their activism in Memphis and the surrounding region. This vibrant catalog showcases a decade's work by Peruvian-American photographer Andrea Morales (b. 1984), whose camera captures community life and activism in the American South, particularly in her home city of Memphis, Tennessee. It accompanies her first major exhibition at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, represents the first scholarly publication on her work, and the first major museum exhibition dedicated to movement journalism. Memphis has long been a place bubbling with social movements. Roll Down Like Water—a nod to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s iconic last speech in the city—shows Morales's incredible ability to engage with her subjects. From intimate portraits and records of daily life to the documentation of social and environmental movements with local and national resonance, her photography builds a passionate and tender portrait of this unique part of the South. Morales centers her practice on building long-term relationships with the communities she photographs and views this relationship as one of collaboration rather than detached observation. Her approach is informed by movement journalism, which recognizes that journalism, like the camera, is not totally objective. By establishing a human connection between chronicler and people and rooting it in an ethical and rigorous framework, Morales's community-driven visual storytelling reaches beyond historical injustice to capture the liveliness and joy of the communities she photographs. For Memphis and Morales, King's words loom large. Echoing his description of collective liberation as "an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny," Morales's captivating images of the South chart new, sustainable paths in photojournalism, while reflecting upon identity, community, and the power of storytelling.