Photograph album of African American women posing in a department store
Scope and Contents
This album features sixty photographs of young African American women posing with department store displays and working in the store’s offices.
The photographs in this album were taken between December 1969 and September 1970 and show a small group of African American women posing amongst home interior displays. The women lounge on furniture and interact with various household goods, including tableware, throw pillows, clocks, and lighting fixtures. The displays feature the highly saturated colors, geometric shapes and lines, and bold patterns characteristic of interior design of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The shots are relaxed and informal, suggesting the photographs were taken by a co-worker and were not for public display or advertisements. Several photographs show the women working at desks in the store’s offices. The store is not identified, but it was possibly a Shoppers Fair department store.
The album has bold, pictorial floral covers and is internally bound with steel rings. It contains ten mylar-covered leaves, with sixty color photographs inserted into the first ten pages. The photos measure 3 ½” x 3 ½”. Many of the photos are slightly overexposed.
Dates
- Creation: 1969 December-1970 September
Creator
- Creator unidentified (Person)
Language of Materials
Materials entirely in English.
Access Information
The collection is open for research.
Terms Governing Use and Reproduction
Use of materials from this collection beyond the exceptions provided for in the Fair Use and Educational Use clauses of the U.S. Copyright Law may violate federal law. Permission to publish or reproduce is required from the copyright holder. Please contact Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, http://library.udel.edu/spec/askspec/
Historical Note
The department store depicted in these photographs used model rooms to display its wares and prompt customers to imagine the goods in their own home. The model room was established as the premier method of advertising store merchandise in the 1930s and remained a common display tactic by department stores until the end of the twentieth century.
Information derived from the collection.
Extent
1 volume (10 leaves) ; 29 cm
Abstract
This album features sixty photographs of young African American women posing with department store displays and working in the store’s offices.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Purchase, November 2017
Shelving Summary
Item 0170: Shelved in SPEC MSS 0093 CMI boxes
Rights Statement
The text of this web page can be reused and modified under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Processing Information
Processed and encoded by Elizabeth Jones-Minsinger, December 2017.
This collection was originally processed and cataloged with the call number PPI 0093 Item 0005.
- Title
- Finding aid for Photograph album of African American women posing in a department store
- Status
- Completed
- Author
- University of Delaware Library, Special Collections
- Date
- 2017 December 8
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
Repository Details
Part of the University of Delaware Library Special Collections Repository