John Edwin Mason

John Edwin Mason teaches African history and the history of photography and co-directs the Holsinger Portrait Project. He has written extensively on early nineteenth-century South Africa history, especially the history of slavery, South African popular culture, including the Cape Town New Year's Carnival and jazz, and the history of photography. He is co-curating the Holsinger Portrait Project's 2022-2023 exhibition, at UVA and the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century portraits of Black Virginians. He is also working on "Gordon Parks and American Democracy," a book about how the Life magazine photo-essays on race and poverty that Parks published during the civil rights era challenged Americans' notions of citizenship and, at the same time, made him one of the era's most significant interpreters of the Black experience. Mason is a documentary photographer with a long-term interest in exploring race and gender in American motor sports. Until recently, he was an active musician, performing with the Charlottesville and University Symphony Orchestra, the Lynchburg (Virginia) Symphony Orchestra, and the New Lyric Theatre, among many other groups.-UVA