Races, Negroes: United States. Alabama. Tuskegee. Tuskegee Institute: Agencies Promoting Assimilation of the Negro: Training for Commercial and Industrial Employment. Tuskegee Institute, Tuskegee, Alabama: Poultry Yard. 1902

Curator: This photograph, titled "Races, Negroes: United States. Alabama. Tuskegee. Tuskegee Institute: Agencies Promoting Assimilation of the Negro: Training for Commercial and Industrial Employment. Tuskegee Institute, Tuskegee, Alabama: Poultry Yard" captures a scene at the Tuskegee Institute. The photographer is Frances Benjamin Johnston. Editor: It strikes me as a very staged image, a tableau of sorts. The subjects seem consciously positioned. Curator: Indeed. Johnston was commissioned to document the institute’s mission of industrial training. Notice the emphasis on the modern machinery alongside the traditional agricultural setting. Editor: It speaks volumes about the complex, often contradictory, project of assimilation. Who defines "progress" and at what cost to cultural identity and self-determination? Curator: Right, it provokes questions about the very nature of labor, who controls its means, and what constitutes meaningful work. Editor: It really makes you think about the politics embedded in seemingly straightforward photographs. Curator: Absolutely, and how institutional photography shaped perceptions during the early twentieth century.