On some occasions, Robinson’s personal life entered the frame. From 1965 to 1972, Robinson’s work was published in Vogue more than five hundred times, and his portraits advanced the careers of Joni Mitchell, Clint Eastwood, Tina Turner, Warren Beatty, Lily Tomlin, The Who, Rod McKuen, and dozens more. Editors Diana Vreeland and Carrie Donovan recognized Robinson’s genius and tapped him to shoot portraits of 1960s rising stars in music, art, film, fashion, and entertainment. In 1955 Robinson left the South for New York City and the world of fashion photography. He was back in New Orleans by 1951 and had started taking photographs. He graduated from a Clarksdale high school in 1945 and attended Tulane from 1945 to 1948 but left after his junior year without graduating. Very little was then known about Robinson’s life in the South. A few letters, two clippings, and a postcard were about the extent of the primary written record from the period, but hundreds of negatives from the 1950s promised to provide clues to the artist’s past. As a Memphian and southern historian, I took it upon myself in May 2004 to unlock the mysteries of Robinson’s life growing up in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and honing his skills as a photographer in his twenties in New Orleans.
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