Home News It was just a portrait of a mother and her daughters — but look more closely at their hands…..

It was just a portrait of a mother and her daughters — but look more closely at their hands…..

News admin1 · February 22, 2026 · Comments off

It was just a portrait of a mother and her daughters, but look more closely at their hands: Dr. James Mitchell had spent 15 years studying photographic archives at the New York Historical Society, yet he had never seen anything quite like this portrait, which arrived in a donation box from an estate sale in Brooklyn containing dozens of glass plate negatives wrapped in yellowed newspaper from 1923, most showing typical late 19th-century scenes of stern merchants, wedding parties, and children in Sunday clothes, until one image stopped him cold—three African-American women stared back through time, a mother of about... Continues…