Florestine Perrault Collins


Florestine Perrault Collins was an American professional photographer from New Orleans. Collins is noted for having created photographs of African-American clients that "reflected pride, sophistication, and dignity" instead of racial stereotypes.

Life and career

Born in Louisiana, Florestine Marguerite Perrault was one of six children in a strict Catholic family. She attended public school only until age six, when she was forced to drop out to help bring in family income.
In 1909, Collins began practicing photography at age 14. Her subjects ranged from weddings, First Communions, and graduations to personal photographs of soldiers who had returned home. At the beginning of her career, Collins had to pass as a white woman to be able to assist photographers and to work for the Eastman Kodak Company. Collins' first husband, Eilert Bertrand, believed that women should not have careers and tried to restrain her public appearances. They later divorced and she married his friend Herbert W. Collins and used his surname professionally.
Collins began her business taking photographs in her living room in 1920. In the mid 1930s, she opened her own studio in South Rampart Street, part of the Black business district, catering to African-American families. She gained a loyal following and had success, due to both her photography and marketing skills. Out of 101 African-American women who identified themselves as photographers in the 1920 U.S. Census, Collins was the only one listed in New Orleans.
She advertised in newspapers, playing up the sentimentality of a well-done photograph. Collins also included her photograph in the advertisements to appeal to customers who thought a female photographer might take better pictures of babies and children.
Collins retired in 1949 and moved to Los Angeles. She later moved back to New Orleans in 1975, where she died in on April 4, 1988.

Legacy

According to the Encyclopedia of Louisiana, Collins' career "mirrored a complicated interplay of gender, racial and class expectations".
"The history of black liberation in the United States could be characterized as a struggle over images as much as it has also been a struggle over rights," according to bell hooks. Collins' photographs are representative of that. By taking pictures of black women and children in domestic settings, she challenged the pervasive stereotypes of the time about black women.
Collins was featured in the 2014 documentary Through A Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People.
Collins' work was included in exhibitions in New Orleans in the late 1900s and early 2000s, such as Women Artists in ''Louisiana, 1825–1965: A Place of Their Own.'' She featured in the touring show "The New Woman Behind the Camera," shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art then the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. in 2021 and 2022.
Collins is the subject of the 2013 book Picturing Black New Orleans: A Creole Photographer’s View of the Early Twentieth Century, by Arthé A. Anthony.