P18: Paul and Lafayette Buchanan Collection

Extent: 37 photographs

Biographical Sketch: Paul Buchanan was born around 1910 and lived at Hawk in Mitchell County, North Carolina. He learned photography from his father, "Fate" Buchanan, who engaged in the business on a part-time basis. In the 1920s, Paul Buchanan started working in the medium professionally and often traveled in the mountain counties of Mitchell, Yancey, Avery, and McDowell in search of subjects. Paul Buchanan died in 1987.

Collection Description: The Buchanan Collection consists of thirty-seven prints made from original negatives loaned to the North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives for printing. Buchanan's photography is not stylized. His subjects dressed as they wished and his photographs appear spontaneous. The images show unidentified men, women, and children in the mountain counties where Buchanan worked. Some of the people are posed in front of quilts. A few of the images include dogs and horses. The photographs appear to have been made in the 1920s and 1930s.

Note: In 1993 the University of North Carolina Press published a collection of Buchanan's photographs in a volume titled The Picture Man by Anne Hawthorne. The Buchanan images located in the North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives do not appear in this volume.

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