Prentice H. Polk headed the photography department at Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) in his native Alabama from 1933 to 1937 and was Tuskegee’s official photographer for forty-five years until his death in 1984. In that role he photographed everyone from the famed WWII pilots known as the Tuskegee Airmen to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to activist Malcolm X. But he also photographed ordinary Black Alabamians, including the formidable and confident woman in the photograph he titled The Boss.

The unidentified woman was at the Tuskegee Institute for a farming convention. Polk recalled, “When she came in the studio, while I was getting my camera ready, I looked up, and I said, ‘That woman can boss anybody.’ . . . And there she is.” Polk explained that his portrait depicted her “in her own matter-of-factness. […] The pose, at an angle, and her expression, authoritative and firm, are not the result of my usual tactics to encourage a response. She wears her own clothes. She is not cloaked in victimization. […] She is not helpless, and she is not cute.”

Image Description: A black-and-white photograph of a standing, dark-skinned woman, seen at three-quarter length and at a three-quarter angle against a black background. She wears a light-colored apron around her waist over a knit vest and a floral-patterned blouse or dress. A wool scarf is looped around her neck and across her body. She wears large hoop earrings and a white cloth tied around her head. Her left hand is on her hip, and she tilts her head slightly to her right, looking out and down at the viewer with a serious expression.