African American expressive culture in Philadelphia project

Administrative Information

Provenance

Purchase; Roland Freeman; 2006-2007, 2022; (DLC/PP-2006:050; DLC/PP-2022:121).

Processing History

The African American Expressive Culture in Philadelphia Project was processed by Victoria Bankole, Brett Carnell, and Jennifer Orme in 2020-2021. Additions to the collection were processed by Brett Carnell in 2022. Not all of the groups of material are described at the same level of detail. Finding aid encoded by Brett Carnell in 2021-2022.

When the Library of Congress acquired the first portion of the collection consisting of large format contact sheets, Roland Freeman provided group-level description information with the collection. His descriptions were originally intended for the rolls of film negatives (not held by the Library of Congress) rather than for the contact sheets printed from the rolls of film. Because of the way the contact sheets were printed and the way Freeman combined descriptions for multiple rolls there is a close, but not exact, correlation between the descriptions and the contact sheets. Library staff transcribed the group-level descriptions that Freeman provided to serve as captions for the contact sheets. In some cases Freeman provided a description for a group of rolls of film as well as descriptions for individual rolls of film within the group. In these cases Library staff combined the two descriptions into one.

Freeman's captions for rolls of film sometimes omitted descriptions of images at the beginning or end of a roll of film that show events captioned on a previous or subsequent roll of film. Library staff added Freeman's caption for the event to Freeman's caption for the roll of film and enclosed the addition in brackets. Freeman did not provide caption information for a few of the contact sheets and Library staff devised captions based upon visual content. These staff supplied captions are enclosed in brackets. On a few occasions the images on a contact sheet did not match the job description Freeman provided the Library but did match a previous or subsequent job. Library staff used Freeman's captions from other film rolls that matched the visual content of the contact sheet and put the caption in brackets.

In some cases two contact sheets were used to print a single roll of film. In these cases, Library staff added the lower case letter "a" to the end of the call number for the first contact sheet and "b" to the second.

Personal Identifiable Information (PII) has been omitted from the finding aid transcriptions for privacy reasons.

The Library subsequently acquired 8 1/2 x 11 in contact sheets, a selection of prints and negatives, and color dye transfer prints (Polaroids) attached to model release forms. The smaller format contact sheets were processed using the same guidelines as the previously processed large format contact sheets. The selected prints were put in chronological order and each print was individually housed in a polyester sleeve. Each roll of film was rehoused in an archival paper sleeve which was labeled with a call number consisting of the negative series code LC-FR14 and the roll number Freeman assigned. The negative number was marked on each of the contact sheets and selected prints. The Library received no contact sheets for rolls 388, 389 and 524 so Library staff created digital contact sheets and surrogate prints for these rolls. The color portraits stapled to some of Freeman's model releases were detached from the releases, arranged in alphabetical order and housed in polyester sleeves.

Related Material

Additional materials with photographs by Roland L. Freeman are described in our Online Catalog and searchable by call number or descriptive words:

• Roland L. Freeman portfolio (Call No.: PH - Freeman (R.), no. 1 (Portfolio))
• U.S. News & World Report Magazine Photograph Collection (Call No.: USN&WR) finding aid available

Related Material at Other Repositories

While the Library of Congress holds a portion of the photographs by Roland L. Freeman, many other repositories also hold portions of his work. A few of these repositories include:

• Auborn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History, a division of the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System holds the Roland L. Freeman Papers
• David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University holds the Roland L. Freeman photographs, 1969-1985

Online Content

To see already digitized images from this collection, search our Online Catalog by call number or descriptive words.

Alternate Formats

Negatives are generally not served to researchers and are stored offsite. A print or scan of each negative is available in the collection.

Preferred Citation

Researchers wishing to cite this collection should include the following information: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, © Roland Freeman, [reproduction number, e.g., LC-DIG-ppmsca-12345]