Races, Negroes: United States. Virginia. Hampton. Hampton Normal and Industrial School: Agencies Promoting Assimilation of the Negro: Training for Commercial and Industrial Employment. Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, Hampton, Va.: Cow Barn at Shellbanks Farm. 1899 - 1900

Curator: Frances Benjamin Johnston's photograph captures the cow barn at Shellbanks Farm, part of the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute. There's a striking symmetry in the composition. Editor: It's definitely imposing. Those repeating wooden beams and the rows of cows feel so regimented, almost like an industrial space. It has an eerie stillness. Curator: Johnston documented the school's mission to assimilate Black students through industrial training. The barn represents a specific kind of labor—agricultural work, but one also deeply tied to ideas about progress and self-sufficiency. Editor: Right, the framing of the image itself is a deliberate construction—highlighting the industrial aspects of farming. The photograph is also a commodity, circulated to garner support for the institution, furthering specific ideas about race and labor. Curator: The light softens the scene, though, giving it a strange peace. Makes me wonder about the lives intertwined within those walls. Editor: Indeed. The labor of the cows and those who tended them, all caught in this complex web of production and power. It's all very tangible, isn't it?