A group of University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) students have painstakingly preserved a photographer’s archive by digitizing it and making it available online to anyone.
Six students worked on the project over the course of two to preserve the work of Clinton Wright, a press photographer who documented Black life in the Westside neighborhood of Las Vegas in the 1960s.
“By digitizing these photographs, researchers gain a clearer and more nuanced understanding of the local Westside community,” says Cory Lampert, head of Digital Collections at UNLV.
“Wright’s photographs appeared in the Las Vegas Voice newspaper, and as the eye of the newspaper, he captured the people and the lives of a vibrant community. His photographs contradict the visual cliches of a Black ghetto and uncover the rich daily lives of people who lived, worked, played, and enjoyed all the many facets of a rich culture in a closely knit community.”
Wright’s pictures have been made available to researchers across the world via the UNLV Speical Collections and Archives Portal. Many of Wright’s images are of everyday events such as marriages, birthday, and anniversaries, as well as street scenes and businesses.
However, Wright also captured celebrities such as Sammy Davis Jr. and Bill Cosby. He would cover breaking news or follow tips the newspaper would receive.
“These images provide a compelling story through the faces of those whose history and lives have been too long omitted from the dominant historical record,” adds Lampert.
Wright, now 88 years old, tells Fox5 he was “encouraged by a gentleman who worked at the newspaper” and told him to “record all of this and someday it might be good to look back on.”
Wright kept all the negatives he shot and made notes detailing what he covered. The photographer agreed to donate over 8,000 negatives to UNLV and the students set to work digitzing them and typing out the metadata.
“The biggest challenge was figuring out how to condense two years of work into just three bullet points and a single image,” says Nicole Garcia-Contreras who worked on the project. “My goal was to present metadata in a way that felt simple and easy to grasp. I’m proud to say I achieved that, creating a clear diagram that effectively illustrates what metadata is.”
You can view and search the Clinton Wright collection here.
Image credits: Courtesy of UNLV/Clinton Wright collection.
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