Bedou, Arthur Paul
1882-1966 · Contribution: 1903-1960s
Studio and documentary photographer
Served as Booker T. Washington’s personal photographer from 1908 until Washington’s 1915 death, then built a nearly six-decade career as one of New Orleans’s leading studio photographers, documenting Black Creole family life, Xavier University, and the city’s Catholic institutions

Portraits are AI-generated interpretations, not photographs.
Quick facts
- Born
- 1882, New Orleans, Louisiana
- Active since
- 1903
- Category
- Press & Photography
- Best known for
- Booker T. Washington's personal photographer and leading chronicler of Black Creole New Orleans
Impact on the world
Bedou created both an intimate record of Booker T. Washington's life and an irreplaceable visual archive of Black Creole family and institutional life in early-20th-century New Orleans.
Sources
- Tuskegee University Archives
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Related visionaries
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