America exposed

There’s something magical about the story of how Chico author and photographer Douglas Keister came to possess one of the nation’s most valuable collections of photographs of early 20th-century African-Americans.

That story is beautifully told in an engaging new exhibit built around a selection of those photographs titled Black and White in Black and White now up in the Museum of Northern California Art.

Keister’s story begins in 1965, when he was just a junior in high school in his hometown of Lincoln, Neb. Even then he was drawn to photography, and by happenstance he was able to purchase, for $10, some 280 historic glass plate photo negatives of members of Lincoln’s substantial black community.

Not knowing what to do with the plates, Keister hung onto them, even after moving to California, where they remained in storage for 35 years. Then, in 1999, his mother mailed him a newspaper clipping about the discovery of 36 glass negatives in the home of a black woman in Lincoln. Another person who saw the article was Ruth Talbert, who recognized the photos as the work of a man named John Johnson. (Talbert is in one of the pictures in this exhibit.) That solved a mystery that had stymied Keister for years: Who was this exceptional photographer?

One of the many beauties of this exhibit is that it establishes Johnson, who had attended college but could find work only as a laborer, as a skillful photographic artist whose work documents his community—between 1910 and 1925—in remarkable ways. Viewers are immediately struck by the dignity and strength of Johnson’s subjects. They were materially poor but spiritually and socially wealthy.

As my colleague Evan Tuchinsky reported in his Oct. 6, 2016, CN&R article, “Developing history,” the photos have been declared a historical treasure in Nebraska, and the new National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington, D.C., has added 60 of them to its permanent collection.

This may be the last time we can view selections from this remarkable collection that has such a strong connection with Chico.

The Johnson photos occupy the Headley and Ginochio galleries on the north side of the museum. They are enhanced by a second exhibit, one that complements Black and White in Black and White and is titled Silence Out Loud, in the Phillips gallery on the south side.

It’s a collection of about two dozen contemporary artworks created by members of the 3.9 Art Collective in San Francisco, an association of black artists, curators and art writers. As they describe it, their mission is “to call attention [through art and activism] to the impact of black emigration from San Francisco” because of impossibly high housing costs.

These artists work in a variety of media, with an emphasis on conceptual and abstract works that reflect, according to MONCA’s written description of the exhibit, “a broader and an extremely personal look at identity, gender, and race through contemporary portraiture.”

It’s a perfect companion to Black and White and equally deserving of your attention. Credit goes to Pat Macias, MONCA’s president and de facto executive director. When she saw that the Johnson photos, as substantial as they were, wouldn’t fill the museum, she contacted her longtime friend Ramekon O’Arwisters, the 3.9 collective’s founder, and quickly arranged an exhibit.

Upcoming: Keister will be speaking about Johnson’s photos on Wednesday (Sept. 19) at 7 p.m. at MONCA. On Sunday, Oct. 7, at 3 p.m., there will be a panel discussion featuring members of the 3.9 Art Collective.