Leigh Richmond Miner (1864-1935) Photographer and Painter
Born in Connecticut, he graduated from the Academy of Design in NYC and taught at Hampton Institute (starting 1898) where he was Director of Applied Art. (Now Hampton University, historically black and Native American university). Known for photography, block printing, ceramics, copper work, and painting, he collaborated with Paul Laurence Dunbar on several books, and took historically significant photos of the rural Gullah (African American) community on Saint Helena Island, South Carolina.
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1909 Leigh Richmond Miner photo of basket weaver Alfred Graham--St. Helena Island, South Carolina (African American Gullah community). Photo exhibited at Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University and is in The Southern Historical Collection, UNC Chapel Hill. Miner taught at Hampton Institute, an historically black and Native American school. He assisted his former students with creating the Penn School on Saint Helena Island. In 1900 Miner began an extensive photographic record of the school.
Close up of Indian photo by Frances Johnston 1900. LC-USZ62-38149 The student, Louis Fire Tail, later became a military recruiter in Fort Thompson, SD during WWI. Indian students were told "to arrive to the campus in traditional garb, “with their wild, barbarous things,” as photographic props, so their change in appearance would appear all the more dramatic in publicity photographs." (Sapirstein)
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He exhibited those paintings in 1902. The Indian subject of this painting is apt, since Miner grew up with Hampton Institute Indian students working during summers on nearby farms. He later taught Native American students at the Hampton Institute (now Hampton University). And spent several months in 1898 visiting the Tlingit tribe in Alaska. (Native American)
signature on indian in headdress. Leigh Richmond Miner "Early in his career at Hampton, in addition to contributing to Dunbar’s poetry books, Miner painted several conventional Indian portraits. One of Miner's paintings, a romanticized 1902 oil portrait of the profile of an Indian student in a Plains war bonnet, hung in the school library's reference room for decades. In the summer of 1902, the Southern Workman reported that Miner had exhibited his “Indian pictures” in Litchfield." (Sapirstein)
Leigh Richmond Miner Copyright 1902 Sapirstein writes: "Early in his career ...Miner painted several conventional Indian portraits." He exhibited those paintings in 1902. The Indian subject of this painting is apt, since Miner grew up with Hampton Institute Indian students working during summers on nearby farms. He later taught Native American students at the Hampton Institute (now Hampton University). And spent several months in 1898 visiting the Tlingit tribe in Alaska. (Native American) #185
To Conserve a Legacy and Black Education
"The Young Chief"-Lakota student --Louis Firetail (Crow Creek Sioux)--probably Leigh Miner's student in ArtsCrafts-which Native students were encouraged to take. 1900 photo by Frances Benjamin Johnston from The Hampton Albums titled "Class in American History". From exhibit: "Talking in Pictures: To Conserve a Legacy and Black Education"Addison Gallery of American Art. From 1878 until 1923, 1,451 American Indians (518 females and 933 males) from 65 tribes attended Hampton. Only 156 graduated.
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