Prom Prince and Princess Dance, Lyons, Georgia, from the series Southern Rites
Gillian Laub, American, born 1975
May 2011
Color photograph
11/25
Image: 9 15/16 × 12 3/8 in. (25.2 × 31.5 cm)
Sheet: 11 × 14 1/16 in. (27.9 × 35.7 cm)
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Gift of Marina and Andrew E. Lewin, Class of 1981
2015.43.7
Geography
Place Imaged: Lyons, United States, North America
Place Made: United States, North America
Period
21st century
Object Name
Photograph
Research Area
Photograph
Not on view
Inscriptions
Initialled, on white adhesive label, on reverse, lower right, in black ink: GL 7
Label
Prom, a treasured high school tradition, is usually shared by a high school class. In Montgomery County, Georgia, that was not the case in 2009. In “A Prom Divided,” a shocking article published in the New York Times, Gillian Laub described the segregated proms thrown by a local high school: one for white students on Friday and one for Black students on Saturday. National outrage after the article forced the proms to be integrated, as documented in this photograph.
Laub took many photos of the newly integrated prom and shows even more images of the event in her documentary Southern Rites. Of all of her photographs, however, this one is particularly compelling. Consider the presence of teenage ritual, racialized beauty standards, and the tension in this image. What do you suppose the prom prince is thinking?
From the 2022 exhibition A Space for Dialogue 104, Southern Gothic, curated by Abigail Smith '23, Conroy Intern
Course History
SART 30, SART 75, Photography II and III, Virginia Beahan, Spring 2019
HIST 23, American History since 1980, Julie Rabig, Spring 2020
Exhibition History
A Space for Dialogue 104, Southern Gothic, Abigail Smith, Class of 2023, Conroy Intern, Alvin P. Gutman Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 8–February 27, 2022.
Provenance
Marina and Andrew E. Lewin, New York, New York; lent to present collection, 2015; given to present collection, 2018.
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