Steven Cuffie: Baltimore Portraits

144 pages

Design by Martha Naranjo Sandoval

© The Estate of Steven Cuffie 

 

Baltimore Portraits presents two bodies of work taken between 1976 and 1985, privately made by the late artist, Steven Cuffie, who spent his life as a photographer working for the city of Baltimore. Edited by his youngest son, Marcus Cuffie, who also wrote an introduction about his father's legacy. My siblings and I discovered them after he passed away, when my sister came across a collection of print filled boxes that had been kept in various cabinets throughout our house. In working with them, two subjects emerged most clearly, women and children. These are the subjects that occur most frequently in his early work. Portraits of women taken while he was a bachelor, and pictures of children he started concurrently in the mid 70's.

 

"In expanding a conversation about Baltimore, and the lives of its peoples his work expands an understanding of the city. The idea of being black in the 70's was developing rapidly and these works are connected to that lineage. The people in these images are not only subjects but collaborators in telling a story. Harder truths of the city are not hidden in the smiles of children, they are understood as only one part of what makes up life. The intimate space in which the portraits of women are taken is one that feels enclosed from external ideas of what blackness meant at the time. Free from narrative, the people in these images are allowed to unfold as real before the viewers eyes, free from politics that demand classification." - Marcus Cuffie

 

Steven Cuffie  (1949 North Carolina – 2014 Baltimore, MD) was an American photographer who worked in Baltimore primarily in the 1970s. He began taking photos as a teenager, and after studying photography for three years at the University of Maryland, he dropped out to pursue his career. Cuffie connected with a small group of Baltimore-based photographers, exhibiting around the city and working on commission. His personal practice was rooted in portraiture, documenting children he encountered on the street and intimate images of women at home or in the studio. For the majority of his life, he was a photographer for the City of Baltimore, taking pictures of public events, crime scenes, infrastructure damages—everything mundane and extraordinary required for public record. By the time Cuffie became a father in 1982, his practice had shifted away from portraits of women, though he continued taking pictures, processing film, and making prints throughout his life. In 2022, New York Life Gallery held a solo show of Cuffie's work, his first exhibition since the 1980s and outside of Baltimore.