Sarah Hoskins
For the past 20 years I have been photographing historic African-American Hamlets in Kentucky. These images are from this project, but are a series in their own right. Like the hamlets themselves there is so much African-American history that has been over looked and neglected, especially women and women-led groups and organizations like this one. The Sisters Benevolent, founded in 1905. One shared and important story of theirs was how they maintained a bathroom in a hair salon so they had somewhere to go while walking home after work. As we focus on this historic anniversary of women getting the right to vote, let us not forget women who worked harder to get much less.
Sarah’s photographs have been included in over 100 exhibitions. Her work is in the permanent collections of The Smithsonian Institution, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, The Center for Photography at Woodstock, CITY 2000, The Art Museum at the University of Kentucky, The City of Chicago and Yaddo. The Archive of Documentary Arts, Duke University’s Rubenstein Library, acquired 250 gelatin silver photographs in 2015.
NPR’s Picture Show featured her Homeplace project, a month later NPR’s Weekend Edition traveled with her to Kentucky and did a feature on her and this work. The NPR PictureShow piece received an end of the year award from The White House News Photographers Association. Her work was selected for Photography Now, 100 portfolios an international survey of photographers sponsored by Eastman Kodak.
Her documentary photography projects have been featured in American Photography Annual, American Legacy Magazine, Center, F8, Foto8, Lenscratch, Oxford American, Photo District News, Preservation, and The Digital Journalist.
She was a Critical Mass Finalist in 2019, 2018, 2016 and 2014. Solo exhibitions include Berea College, The Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, and The Art Museum at The University Kentucky. She was a 2003 recipient of the Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Photography.
instagram: @shoskinsphoto
