Kerry Coppin was born in Peekskill, New York, and grew up in the South Bronx. Since earning his M.F.A. in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, in 1977, Coppin has taught at colleges and universities across the United States; he is currently on the faculty of Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas.
Second Annual Carnival Ball is one of some six hundred photographs commissioned from a number of artists to document Chicago (see Changing Chicago: A Photodocumentation [Urbana/Chicago, 1989]). Coppin’s contribution to this project was a series of images related to openings at various galleries and institutions in Chicago devoted to African American art and culture. In this photograph, he situated himself on the street, in order to capture the arrival of guests at a masked ball at the DuSable Museum of African American History. Evoking the intrigue and romance of carnival celebrations in such places as New Orleans, Rio de Janeiro, and Venice, the photograph features a man and woman wearing formal dress and striking metal masks. They seem be moving from the right, where several figures appear to bustle around what might be a registration table, to the left, behind a young worker, in dress shirt and bow tie, who sports a ribbon labeled “DuSable” and looks shyly at the camera.
