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Scattered Treasures
Losing the Legacy of Photographer Nestor Hernandez,
Jr.
By Donna M. Wells
About two weeks
ago, it was brought to the attention of the local
African American photography community that the
photographs, negatives, portfolios, camera equipment,
and photography books belonging to Nestor Hernandez, Jr.
were being sold by two vendors at the 6th street and
Florida Avenue flea market. Nestor was a locally based
award winning documentary photographer who died in 2006
at the age of 45.
Although he is
recognized for his work as the official photographer for
the Children’s Museum and for DC Public Schools, he is
best known among his peers for his extensive body of
work documenting the people and culture of persons of
African descent. During the last years of his life, he
devoted his time to cultural exchange ventures which
linked like-minded photographers from around the world.
Between 1978 and
2003, he made eighteen trips to Cuba, initially making
personal connections with his Cuban family. For his
last three trips, he invited American photographers to
accompany him to meet and discuss photography with Cuban
photographers which resulted in two comprehensive
exhibits both in Cuba and in Washington, DC.
Nestor’s photo
prints were being sold for an appalling $3.00 each at
the market. Working with members of a local photography
association, we learned that Nestor’s father had placed
his son’s collection in a self-storage unit at a
commercial facility after Nestor died in 2006. The
father never told the rest of the family and when he
himself died unexpectedly a year later, the bill for the
storage unit remained unpaid until it was auctioned off
recently. The family is devastated by the loss and this
echoes what has happened around the country with family
collections, like the Malcolm X Papers and the
photographs of Teenie “One Shot” Harris, for example.
The photography
community is equally devastated by the loss and by the
way Nestor’s legacy is being scattered to the winds.
The vendors informed us that everything had already been
sold although they were previously apprised of the
situation and were made an offer to purchase everything
that was left. An arts attorney said that nothing could
be done about the prints since the storage bin sale was
legitimate. However, the creative rights to print from
the negatives remains with the family regardless of the
fact that the vendors claim they don’t know who they
sold them to.
The bigger picture
is that we need to be more aggressive in protecting
family collections, not just in the preservation sense,
but in the security of our belongings. The current
economic conditions have forced many families to lose
their homes and family papers and other treasures are
being left behind or lost in the process. At the same
time, venues such as eBay and the Antique
Roadshow encourage many of us to see dollar signs on
items hanging on the walls and gracing the shelves of
our homes. As guardians of family collections, or as a
business person like Nestor, we need to be diligent
about informing a trusted family member about the
business and about the location and disposal of family
collections. In this high tech environment, this also
includes keeping track of and sharing with family
members the passwords to e-mail accounts, on-line
business services, and website domains.
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Archival Forum
The Historical Society of Washington, DC
801 K Street, NW / Washington, DC 20001
October 15th,
6:30 pm to 8:30 pm
The Historical
Society of Washington, DC, the Exposure Group African
American Photographers Association, and the Moorland-Spingarn
Research Center at Howard University are hosting a forum
to address this issue on October 15th, 6:30
pm to 8:30 pm at the Historical Society. The situation
will be discussed from a variety of perspectives and the
panelists will include an archivist, a member of the
Hernandez family, a copyright specialist, an arts
attorney, and a collector. This event is free and open
to the public.
Speakers
include:
Syreeta N. Swann
Joseph, Copyright specialist; Larry Frazier,
Attorney for Wills, Estates & Probate Law; Philip
Merrill, Founder of Nanny Jack & Co.,
author, historian, and former appraiser of Black
Memorabilia on PBS' Antiques Roadshow; Allan
Stypeck Owner of Second Story Books / Senior
Member; Yvonne Hernandez, Sister, Nestor
Hernandez, Jr.; Donna M. Wells, Prints and Photo
Librarian at Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard
University, author, historian, co-author of Legacy:
Treasures of Black History.
Yvonne Carignan, archivist
for the Historical Society of Washington, DC, will
moderate the program on the 15th.
Donna M. Wells / Prints and Photographs Librarian /
Moorland-Spingarn Research Center / Howard University /
500 Howard Place, NW / Washington, DC 20059 / (202)
806-7480 / fax: (202) 806-6405
dwells@howard.edu
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Donna
M. Wells is Prints and Photographs Librarian
at Howard University's Moorland-Spingarn
Research Center. Before coming to Howard,
she was the assistant archivist for the
American Association for the Advancement of
Science. Formerly, she served as the
archivist for Gallaudet University, where
she also taught Museum Studies, and has also
worked as a photo librarian at the Library
of Congress.
Since receiving her Masters degree in
library and archives administration in 1983,
Wells has devoted her work to the care and
interpretation of African American
collections and to the preservation of
Washington, DC history. Currently, she
serves on the city’s Emancipation
Celebration Commission and on the Historical
Records Advisory Review Board. |
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She is also a
board member of the Historical Society of
Washington, DC and has served on the program
committee of the DC Historical Studies Conference
since 1995. In 1993, she was a consultant for the
development of an archive at Smithsonian’s Anacostia
Museum and in 2001 she was an advisor to the
Griffith Stadium Memorial and Museum Project.
Recently, she was drafted to serve as a consultant
for Fred’s Army, an organization on Maryland’s
Easton Shore which is devoted to honoring their most
famous resident, Frederick Douglass.
Ms. Wells is
involved in a number of projects devoted to the care
and preservation of historical image collections.
She frequently lectures and conducts workshops on
the care of photographs for general audiences. Her
lectures on photographic history incorporate a
unique approach that fuses the role of African
Americans as the subject, as the creator, and as the
critic of images. Although not a photographer, she
is an active member of the Exposure Group African
American Photographers Association and the FotoCraft
Camera Club, serving as a consultant for their
public programs and as a resource for the archiving
of their life’s work.
She has
published reviews and articles on photography and on
photographers, including Protecting Your Image,
which appeared in Essence Magazine in1999, and
several short biographies which will be published in
the upcoming encyclopedia of African American
biographies by Oxford University Press. She is
co-author with Thomas C. Battle of National
Geographic’s award winning Legacy: Treasures of
Black History. Currently, she is working as a
researcher and writer for Freedom in my Heart: a
People’s Courage and Contribution, a joint
publication of National Geographic and the U. S.
National Slavery Museum
Ms. Wells is a
native Washingtonian. She received her Bachelors of
Art in art history from Hampton University, a
Masters in Library Science from the University of
Maryland, and is A.B.D. in the Department of History
at Howard University.
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The photographs of Nestor Hernández, Jr.—Nestor
Hernandez, Jr. departed this life on Friday, May 12,
2006 in Washington, DC. He was 45. Nestor will be
missed by the many, many people whose lives he
touched.
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posted 26 September 2008
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