Click a SEE icon (the eye) to open the gallery with the selected images.

Rev. Taylor began taking photographs in the mid 1920s.  As a young preacher, he and his friends travelled the countryside visiting friends, courting, attending revivals and church services.  One of the first photographs in The Taylor Collection shows a man repairing a car bearing a 1925 license plate.  Taylor took pictures throughout the region and in his home studio.  His photographs are insightful documents of family and friends, businesses and events, and folks who just wanted to have their picture made.

The Personal Section provides an intimate look at Rev. and Mrs. Taylor when they met and married. It also includes images of close neighbors and friends.

The Places Section calls attention to Rev. Taylor's ability to travel throughout the community to make pictures of people, businesses and events that he felt were important documents of Memphis' African American Community.

The Portraits Section includes photographs Rev. Taylor took in homes and neighborhoods and in front of the screen in his home studio.  These photographs show how Rev.Taylor was able to relax the subjects to take intimate, revealing images.

Each photograph's description in this exhibit includes the size of the negative.  Knowing this helped us determine the variety of cameras Taylor used during his career.  For example, from the 1920s to the 1940s he used 2.5 by 4.5 Kodak and Ansco film in his Kodak Box Camera.  In the 1930s and 1940s he used 4 x 5 negative sheet film in his View Camera.  After 1946 many of his photographs were made on 5x7 negative film which he used in his Eastman View Camera 2-D.

Please help us with our ongoing research and let us know if you recognize anyone from the photos in this exhibit.  To contact us, just click the link next to the corresponding picture within the gallery. 

The Center for Southern Folklore has selected a group of Taylor photographs from our archives to be available for sale for the first time in decades.  These images are available individually or as a boxed set.