User:Smmsld010/Robert H. McNeill

Robert H. McNeill ... Robert Henry McNeill (December 19, 1917-May 27, 2005) was a trail-blazing photographic chronicler of African American life along the U.S. mid Atlantic seaboard, most notably Washington, D.C, rural Virginia, and New York City in the 1930,1940's and 1950's. He was also a photo-documentationian whose work has been favorably compared to the documentary work of his contemporary Gordon Parks.[note]and a portrait artist whose work captured notable subjects from Jackie Robinson to Henry Kissinger in his official Department of State photograph.

McNeill's photography has been well recognized, having been included in numerous national exhibitions, books, feature and documentary films, and television productions, and also provides the historical pictorial backdrop which illuminates black life on several historical markers across his native District of Columbia including the U-Street corridor, the so-called ["Black Broadway"] of pre-and post WWII, Washington. His work has a renaisance of sorts when he rediscovered and was feature in Smithsonian exhibit Visual Journal, which was curated in part by McArthur Foundation grant winner Deborah Willis. [insert Wiki link]

Early in his career Mr. McNeill began his to use his eye for photographic truth in his portrayal of the dignity of domestic workers which also revealed their annoyance, resentment and strieved-for balance in handling submission to authority which was part of their every-day lives [Nick Natanson [summer 1997 issue of Prologue, the National Archives magazine.] McNeill was a daily recorder of the milestones of black achievement,[Washington Seen] but he also explored interactions between black upperclass and the majority of poor and working class blacks all the while confronting and countering negative stereotypes.

Born to middle-class parents as WWI was coming to an end, McNeill became interested in photography as a student at Washington's legendary Dunbar High School. Mr. McNeill's first professionally published photo was of Jesse Owens on a 1936 visit to Howard University, fresh from his Berlin Olympic victories. When Mr. McNeill, then a Howard student, sold a copy of his photo to each of the five D.C. newspapers, he realized he could make a living with his camera. He moved to New York to study photography and graduated from the New York Institute of Photography in 1938. He became a photographer on a Works Progress Administration project and was assigned to travel throughout Virginia for "Virginia: A Guide to the Old Dominion" and "The Negro in Virginia," both published in 1940. He didn't have much film for the three-week journey and made only 160 images with his Speed Graphic. He also shot a couple of 35mm rolls of film with a borrowed Leica camera. He didn't have much encouragement in the job, either; crab-pickers and string-bean pickers were "not proud of what they were doing," he said. "It didn't matter that I was a black photographer. They didn't want their picture taken by anyone." He was driving through the small coal town of Pocahontas in a black Ford coupe with "USA" on the license plate. A sheriff "with a long gun going practically to his knee," Mr. McNeill said, stopped him and hauled him in for questioning. He wasn't arrested, but "they never did let me photograph in the mines. Only the show mine." In Richmond's dangerous Sophie's Alley, he photographed a meditative group of card players "in a way that seemed to define 'slum' alley space as much by the active consciousness of the residents as by physical degradation," Natanson wrote. Back from Virginia, he set up a studio in his father's basement in the 1400 block of T Street NW, and later in his own business at 13th and U streets. He specialized in photos of such celebrities as boxer Joe Louis and singers Marian Anderson and Ella Fitzgerald. Forced by circumstances to be inventive, he shot one of his most famous photos, of dancer Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, from the wings of the Earl Theater (now the Warner) because black patrons were barred from the front-row seats. During World War II, he served in the Army Signal Corps, including a tour on Guadalcanal. When he returned to Washington, he resumed his business and was commissioned by the United Negro College Fund to compile more than 250 photographs documenting the efforts of 11 of its member colleges to establish veterans educational programs. He closed his business in 1950 to become a photographer at the Naval Gun Factory and worked at the Pentagon and the Naval Ordnance Laboratory before beginning a career at the Department of State in 1956. He took the official photographs of three secretaries of state: Dean Rusk, Henry Kissinger and Cyrus Vance. In 1978, Mr. McNeill retired as chief of the State Department's photography branch. In retirement, Mr. McNeill saw his work revived in many exhibits and in local, national and international television documentaries. It has appeared in three Smithsonian Institution museums: the Anacostia Museum, the National Museum of American Art and the Anacostia Museum's Center for African American History and Culture.

and over the years turned his lens on the rich life around him, from portraits of hogshead barrel makers in rural Virginia to families at the National Zoo on Easter weekend to the world-famous entertainers and sports figures who swept through the District's U Street venues and Griffith Stadium.

References

Washington Seen: A Photographic History 1875-1965 (226)

External links

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