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Menasco Studio Collection acquired by LSUS Archives

The collection of one of the most renowned photographers in Shreveport’s history is now housed in the LSUS Archives and Special Collections in the Noel Memorial Library.

The Menasco Studio Collection was acquired by the LSUS Archives and Special Collections in April 2005 with assistance from Scot Smith of Smith Photographic Services; his father, well-known photographer Thurman C. Smith, a longtime friend of the Menascos, and the LSUS Alumni Association. Comprising 32,000 photo shoots and nearly 200,000 negatives, the collection represents the life’s work and the distinguished career of the late Robert Menasco, one of Shreveport’s best known and most respected photographers, and is a veritable “Who’s Who” of Shreveport and north Louisiana.

The collection was given to LSUS by Menasco’s widow, Aloyese Thorn Menasco Seyburn, who lived in Spring, Texas, until her death on May 15.

Following the transfer of the collection to the LSUS Archives and Special Collections, the library staff cleaned, inventoried, preserved and indexed it.

In early April 2006, “The Eye of the Beholder,” an exhibit featuring the collection, opened on the third floor of the Library. At a reception marking the opening, Scot and Thurman Smith joined Menasco’s sons – Robert, who now lives in Nashville, Tenn., and Marc, who lives in Houston – and a handful of local photographers and historians in reminiscing about the Menasco team. The exhibit was on display through May.

The exhibit presented a number of photos reflecting the diversity of clientele, from brides to businessmen, entertainers to cultural events such as Holiday-in-Dixie and Little Theatre. Additional displays highlighted cameras, equipment and the studio itself; the art and craft of portraiture as practiced by the Menascos, and the process of archivally preserving the collection.

Menasco Studios opened in September 1943 on the second and third floors of the old Commercial National Bank Building at the corner of Milam and Market Streets in downtown Shreveport. For 50 years, Menasco photographed some of Shreveport’s most notable personalities, as well as sites all around Louisiana documenting the state’s progress. He was also a pioneer in photographing high school football games.

Menasco, who hailed from Glenwood, Ark., headed west as a young man to seek his fortune in California, but wound up in Shreveport instead. He started his first photography studio in the old Continental American Bank building at the corner of Market and Milam in 1943. He had a darkroom on the second floor and free-lanced for The (Shreveport) Times as a news photographer. As his clientele grew, he took over two floors in the bank building.

He had no formal training in art or photography, but “he just had this knack,” Seyburn, his second wife and artistic partner, told McLemore in one of their many telephone conversations. Seyburn had the New York art school education and experience, “the other side of what he hadn’t done.” According to her, Menasco decided on his career in a rather unorthodox way.

“He was the nervous type,” she explained, always hopping from here to there. “One day while Bob waited agitatedly for an appointment at Doctor’s Sanitarium, Dr. Paul Abramson went in to his room, threw a professional photographer’s magazine at him and said, ‘Here, settle down on this for a while.’” The rest, as they say – and, in fact – is history.