Ivey Gladin started his studio in Helen in 1939. Ivey's wife, Morvene, and his mother, Susan, operated the business while he was in the service during World War II. After the war, the young Gladins worked as a team. In the early years, Morvene worked in the studio touching up black and white negatives and hand painting the large, portrait photographs. Later, she joined Ivey in the field as a photographer. Over the years, the Gladin Photography Studio developed a reputation for making fine reproduction images from old, deteriorated prints and negatives. The Gladin Collection contains a number of reproduction photographs of historic Helena from the 1800s. The collection also contains a large selection of commercial work from the 1950s and 1960s, providing a strong visual sense of life in Helena and popular culture in the middle of the 20th century, and innumerable photographs of trains and steamboats, attesting to former vitality of this Mississippi River city.

Ivey Gladin is well known among blues enthusiasts for his photographs of Sonny Boy Williamson's performances on the KFFA King Biscuit Time radio show in the early 1940s. Three images shot in 1941, 1942, and 1944 are available for purchase individually or as a set. To order, call the Southern Media Archive at 601-232-7811 or e-mail kglynn@olemiss.edu.