JEFF ROSENHEIM: These ensembles are so important to our understanding of the American experience. Individuals coming together, not to go to church, not for births and deaths, but for the purposes of leaving their likeness behind for the future.

NARRATOR: In this ensemble, we see multiple generations of an unknown family posing in front of their home. Everyone is dressed in their best clothing, and even the family dog is present.

ROSENHEIM: The dog seems to have held a little less still than the rest of the folk.

NARRATOR: He’s that blur at their feet.

ROSENHEIM: We don’t really know where this picture was made. We can guess based on the style of the architecture. But until we know more, what we’re left with is this sense of pride of place.

NARRATOR: Here’s Makeda Best. She’s a photography historian and deputy director of curatorial affairs at the Oakland Museum in California.

MAKEDA BEST: These people are able to claim a space. They’re able to demonstrate their ownership. It’s a place that is owned by these people and they have this pride in it. And the photograph offers the opportunity to record that.

I think at this moment, you’re seeing a nation that wants to, through photography, speak about who they are. And even if it’s a tiny sliver of the country, and this is a single moment in time, they are claiming that….

ROSENHEIM: That we have made it in this new country, in this new democracy. And we’re going to make a picture for the future that records the present.

I find these pictures extremely experientially warm. There’s this sense of community about them, and they tug on my heartstrings, because I want to know everything about these families. And yet we know very little at this time.

Hopefully, when these pictures that have never been published before are seen by the public, somebody will reach out to us and let us know who these people are. I think it’s going to happen.