Florestine Perrault Collins

Florestine (1895 - 1988) chronicled life in Black New Orleans through her photography. She was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on January 20, 1895, and raised in a Creole Catholic family as the eldest of six children. At 14, she had to earn wages to supplement the family income and she started working in photography. When she began her career, she passed as white, allowing her to work as an assistant to white photographers and develop her skills.

Collins opened a studio in her home and marketed herself as an African American female photographer. In addition to her photography skills, she was a master marketer, using her self-portrait as an advertisement and focusing on women and children. She eventually moved to a separate location called the Collins Studio on South Ramparts Street in New Orleans’ main black business district.  

She was one of 101 black women photographers recorded in the 1920 U.S. Census. Her photography challenged the period’s stereotypes of African Americans by using conventional poses that reflected conservative middle-class African American definitions of femininity and masculinity. Collins’s photographs in the early 1920s - which included portraits of young women with such feminine props as kittens and flowers - are representations of black women as dignified and sophisticated, the antitheses of the racial caricatures of the period. [Arthe A. Anthony]

The 2012 book, Picturing Black New Orleans, documents the “visual legacy” of Collins’ work.