'No image can possibly contain all of Houston and yet, when I look at 'Flipping Boy,' a photograph by Earlie Hudnall, Jr. that was taken — or “made,” as he says — in 1983, I think it comes close.'
This photograph,"Flipping Boy," was made in Fourth Ward, Houston, Texas in 1983. Gelatin silver print. Image courtesy of the Artist and PDNB Gallery.,” a photograph by Earlie Hudnall, Jr. that was taken — or “made,” as he says — in 1983, I think it comes close.
Hudnall is one of those photographers. When he came to Houston in 1968, as so many young Black would-be artists did, he went to Texas Southern University, ready to draw and paint under the tutelage of Dr. John Biggers. Instead, photography found him. Over the next 50 years, he would go on to shape how we see neighborhoods such as Acres Homes, Third Ward and Fourth Ward, where he photographed the flipping boy.
Hudnall is a wiry man and in videos and interviews, he always seems to be cradling his camera, even in the rare moments when it’s not there. He has soft eyes and a broad smile that disappear each time his bald head dips down to peer through the viewfinder of his camera.on the streets of Fourth Ward, stopping mid-sentence to take a photograph of a man with a mop heading into the Queen of Sheba Grand Chapter, Order of Eastern Star of Texas Inc.
"John Biggers in his Studio," was made in Houston, Texas in 1986. Gelatin silver print. Image courtesy of the Artist and PDNB Gallery.At the height of late ‘60s turmoil and ambition, President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty supported long-neglected urban areas, in part, through the Model Cities program. From the federal perspective, Model Cities would be a sort of corrective to the Urban Renewal era.
“I love old things, old buildings, the weathered wood and so forth,” Hudnall said. “You feel kindred to it,” he explained, “I love to work with my hands, I love to build things.” The bricks, the homes, the community all held the same kind of handmade magic as a photograph, first put to film and then constructed tray by tray through the developing process to create lush gelatin silver prints.
Meanwhile, organizations like the Houston Housing Authority and the Houston Housing Development Corp. had all but thrown in the towel. HHDC executive director Tom Lord told the Chronicle that same year that “land prices are just too high,” to consider buying land for housing development. HHA director Tom Booker concurred: “It really doesn’t make much sense to place new housing in a residential area that doesn’t have much longer to go before it goes for commercial development.
Hudnall is often oblique about what his body of work all adds up to here. “I think my legacy is up to how people perceive and what people think of me,” he told me. “I have no control over that.”
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