Lucy Parsons thus chose two highly regarded, technically proficient New York City photographers to take her photo in 1886. Their talents ensured that these portrait photos captured the public’s attention for decades to come. […]
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Always the contrarian, Lucy Parsons commanded treatment on her own terms as a wholly unique individual, entitled to equality, dignity, and respect; and she claimed that higher ground not only for herself but for all people, everywhere and forever. […] That Lucy Parsons was not “white” was apparent to both the audiences she addressed and the mass media that routinely reported on her activities. The published observations of her physical attributes referred to her skin color in euphemistic terms such as “dusky,” “mulatto” and “quadroon,” or bluntly as “negro” and “negress,” adjectives and nouns all used to sully her reputation and undermine her credibility. […] The relationship between photographer and sitter is, at best, an intimate collaboration that serves mutual purposes. This photograph of Lucy Parsons by Paul Grottkau is a perfect example of that truism, and quite possibly a conscious attempt to seize control of the public narrative from a hostile media. […] Paul Grottkau brought to his work as a studio photographer an aptitude for managing complex, precise technical processes as required in the practice of the building sciences in which he was educated. His day-to-day organizing activities within the labor movement required a deep devotion to social ethics and a sincerely felt empathy for ordinary folks and their interests. This combination of technical knowledge and social conscience must have served him well as he endeavored to put his customers at ease before his lens. […] |
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