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New Orleans in the 1950s provides a once-in-a-lifetime tour of New Orleans. Gleaned from thousands of photographer Jack Robinson’s negatives, the images collected here reveal a city with a racially-integrated daily life and culture, thriving modern art movement, unique public figures, and Mardi Gras as celebrated during the early Cold War era. Robinson spent several years in New Orleans before heading to New York where his photography career took off, leading him to international recognition.   

As a fashion and celebrity photographer for Vogue during the 1960s, Robinson had the opportunity to travel the world and photograph rising stars. Robinson captured upcoming literary, film, art, dance, music, and political figures. Sadly, his professional career came to an untimely end in the 1970s as he struggled with alcoholism. Slipping out of the limelight of fame, Robinson quietly lived out the rest of his days in Memphis, Tennessee, where he died in 1997. After his death, historians and those who knew him were surprised by the contents of his modest apartment. 

Although Robinson never mentioned his illustrious career as a photographer, he kept thousands of black–and–white negatives of work he had done in New Orleans in the 1950s. In image after image, the diverse people and easily recognizable places of New Orleans are frozen in time.    

This exhibition is curated by Dr. Sarah Wilkerson-Freeman, Associate Professor of History at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Dr. Wilkerson-Freeman developed this exhibition after analyzing Robinson’s New Orleans negatives for historical and biographical purposes. A larger version of this exhibit was debuted at the Newcomb Art Gallery, which is part of Sophie Newcomb College, Tulane University.