Camera Grants Professor Access to Cultural Communities

Mason, 53, teaches African history, South African history and the history of photography. He also uses photography to document history, preserving for posterity images of seldom-studied corners of culture.

"There are plenty of photographs of the Cape Town Carnival, but never photos from the inside," Mason said.

Mason, a frequent visitor to Cape Town for more than 20 years, studies 19th-century slavery in South Africa and its impacts. Documenting the minstrels is part of this, since many in the mixed-race community are descendants of slaves.

Mason donned a uniform and spent six weeks with Cape Town's Pennsylvania Crooning Minstrels � participating in their New Year's marches and six weeks of weekend competitions that followed � all the while capturing their activities in photos.



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