Arthur P. Bedou
*Arthur P. Bedou was born on this date in 1882. He was a Black photographer based in New Orleans.
Arthur Paul Bedou was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, the fifth child of Armand Bedou and Marie Celeste Coustaut. His family was poor, and he received very little education; as a photographer, he was largely self-taught. Bedou worked for a time as a clerk, but by 1899, he was taking pictures, and his career started in earnest when a photograph he took of a solar eclipse in 1900 received wide notice.
In 1903, Bedou attended a conference at the Tuskegee Institute to gain visibility for his work. Booker T. Washington saw some of his photographs. Washington invited Bedou to accompany him as his photographer, preferring Bedou over other candidates such as C. M. Battey in part because of his ability to produce dynamic images of unfolding events. Most of his photographs of Washington were taken between 1908 and 1915, the year of Washington's death. Among other tasks, he accompanied Washington on his summer tours with the object of producing an album of each trip. To supplement his uncertain income from these travels, he had some of the photographs he took made into postcards, Christmas cards, and calendars.
His position brought him further commissions to photograph notables, including George Washington Carver, Theodore Roosevelt, Andrew Carnegie, and Julius Rosenwald. Through the connection to Washington, the school's founding principal, Bedou, was invited to become the official photographer of the Tuskegee Institute. Shortly after Washington's death, however, Battey replaced him as the school's official photographer, who was favored by campus officials at the time for various reasons.
He was also in demand by other Black colleges and schools, such as Fisk University, to document life on their campuses as well as by professional organizations like the National Negro Business League, the National Medical Association, and the National Baptist Convention. In the 1920s, Bedou opened his photography studio in New Orleans, where he photographed a wide range of subjects, including Black families and their children, the laying of the cornerstone at Corpus Christi Church, and the visits of jazz bands and celebrity speakers.
His photographs often appeared in the Louisiana Weekly (a newspaper with a primarily Black circulation) and the general circulation of the Louisiana Times-Picayune. Over the years, his photographs won several awards, including the 1907 Jamestown Tercentennial Exposition gold medal. Bedou prospered and invested in real estate and companies, such as the People's Industrial Life Insurance Company of Louisiana, of which he served as a director and vice president for many years.
Bedou photographed numerous events, activities, and portraits around the Xavier University of Louisiana campus from 1917 to the late 1950s. When he died on July 2, 1966, he left a significant portion of his fortune to educational institutions. His wife, Lillia Bedou, subsequently founded a scholarship in his honor at Xavier University of Louisiana. Since her death, the scholarship has been known as the Arthur and Lillia Bedou Scholarship. Xavier University, Archives & Special Collections, also holds an extensive collection of his photographs.
