Scurlock Studio. Picturing the Promise: The Scurlock Studio and Black Washington.

Smithsonian, 2009. 1st edition, 1st printing. Foreword by Deborah Willis. Essays by Lonnie G. Bunch III and A.J. Verdelle. [The Scurlock studio became the best known African American photography business in Washington, DC.] Stiff wraps, like new. 224 pages.

Addison N. Scurlock (1883–1964) was a pioneering African American photographer and founder of the renowned Scurlock Studio, whose dignified portraiture chronicled the vibrant intellectual, cultural, and political life of Black Washington, D.C., for more than half a century. Born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Scurlock moved with his family to Washington, D.C., in 1900, where he served an apprenticeship under white portrait photographer Moses P. Rice before opening his own studio on U Street in 1911. Masterful in his handling of studio lighting and composition, Scurlock developed a distinctively elegant aesthetic characterized by soft lighting and meticulous retouching—known as the "Scurlock look"—that celebrated the pride, achievement, and respectability of his sitters during an era of pervasive racial segregation. As the official photographer for Howard University and a trusted portraitist to prominent African American figures including Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Marian Anderson, Scurlock and his sons built an invaluable visual archive of 20th-century Black history, now preserved at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History.