ROBERT A. SENGSTACKE (1943 - 2017) Inauguration of Richard Hatcher.
Silver print, 1968. 229x120 mm; 9x4 3/4 inches. Signed and dated in pencil on the mount, verso.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection, Chicago (2008).
This scarce photograph by Robert "Bobby" Sengstacke of Richard Hatcher was taken during Hatcher's inauguration as Mayor of Gary, Indiana in 1968. Hatcher, along with Carl Stokes of Cleveland, were the first Black mayors of large urban American cities. Sengstacke is an important photographer associated with the Black Arts movement in America, and contributed images of African American political and cultural leaders to his family's newspaper, The Chicago Defender, in Chicago. His photographs have recently been exhibited in Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties (Brooklyn Museum, 2014), Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power (Tate Modern, 2017), and Never a Lovely So Real: Photography and Film in Chicago, 1950-1980 (Art Institute of Chicago, 2018). His photographs are in many public collections including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Studio Museum in Harlem.
