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Photography Books - Social and Historical - Black Photography
Photography books dealing with black historical and social photography. Black and African-American photography and photographers. |
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 A Small Nation of People : W. E. B. Du Bois and African American Portraits of Progress
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As the world prepared for the Exposition Universalle de 1900 in Paris, W. E. B. Du Bois was approached to help represent African American life. He came with a cache of stunning photographs to illustrate the progress of Negroes in America -- thereby offering a photographic counterpoint to the prolific stereotyping of blacks that left viewers awestruck.
With insights from Pulitzer Prize winner David Levering Lewis and Mac-Arthur Fellow photo historian Deborah Willis, A Small Nation of People presents more than one hundred and fifty of these important photographs together for the first time since their initial unveiling. Here is an incredible treasure trove of illustrations of African Americans in front of their new businesses, universities, and homes -- sometimes modest, sometimes elegant. Here, too, are beautiful Victorian-era portraits of blacks whose varied hues show how diverse black Americans truly were. Viewed together, the collection reveals in glorious detail what Du Bois saw -- a small nation of people prepared to make their mark on America. |
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Black Beauty: A History and a Celebration
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Through over 150 color and black and white photographs and an engaging, informed text Black Beauty discusses the position of blacks within the beauty hierarchy of the West, as well as the kinds of work available to black models within the past century.
Author Ben Arogundade also offers insight to the ways in which certain styles of black beauty have been promoted above others. In considering black icons and celebrities from Marcus Garvey, Josephine Baker, and Muhammad Ali to Billy Dee Williams, Grace Jones and Lauryn Hill, Black Beauty reveals the many differing images of those who have embodied black beauty in our culture. Portraits by Herb Ritts, Albert Watson, Richard Avedon, and other eminent photographers are included in this stunning compilation. |
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Black: A Celebration of a Culture
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Presents the vibrant panorama of 20th-century black culture in America and around the world in more than 500 photographs from the turn of the last century to the present day. Each photograph, hand-picked by Deborah Willis, America's leading historian of African-American photography, celebrates the world of music, art, fashion, sports, family, worship or play. From Saturday night parties to Sunday morning worship, Jessie Owens to Barry Bonds, Ella Fitzgerald to Halle Berry, Black: A Celebration of a Culture is joyous and inspiring. |
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Committed to the Image: Contemporary Black Photographers
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This volume provides a remarkable sampling of the work of almost 100 contemporary African American photographers. Although each photographer is represented by only a few images, his or her unique vision and artistic techniques are readily evident.
What these artists have in common is the use of the photographic medium to make powerful statements about the black experience in America, with results ranging from profoundly dignified portraits of both famous and ordinary people, to photojournalistic records of the ongoing struggle for justice and civil rights, and symbolic (and sometimes abstracted) images focusing on important social/racial issues.
Preceding the catalog of images are several short essays that provide some historical background to black photography and underscore the unambiguously assertive content of the photographs. Short biographies of the 94 photographers are also provided. Highly recommended for any library with an interest in black studies, history of photography, or American culture. |
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Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers, 1840 to the Present
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triumphant celebration of the power of family, endurance, spirituality, and the diverse range of the African American experience over the last two centuries. Reflections in Black, the first comprehensive history of black photographers, is Deborah Willis's long-awaited, groundbreaking assemblage of photographs of African American life from 1840 to the present. Willis, a curator of photography at the Smithsonian Institution, has selected nearly 600 stunning images that give us rich, hugely moving glimpses of black life, from slavery to the Great Migrations, from rare antebellum portraits to 1990s middle-class families. Featuring the work of undisputed masters such as James Presley Ball, C. M. Battey, James VanDerZee, Morgan and Marvin Smith, Gordon Parks, Moneta Sleet, Jr., and Carrie Mae Weems, among hundreds of others, Reflections in Black is, most powerfully, a refutation of the gross caricature of the many mainstream photographers who have continually emphasized poverty over family, despair over hope. Recalling Roman Vishniac's Vanished World in terms of its documentary importance, and Brian Lanker's I Dream a World in terms of its exceptional beauty, Reflections in Black is not only an exceptional gift book for any occasion but also a work so significant that it has the power to reconfigure our conception of American history itself. It demands to be included in every American family's library as the record of an essential part of our heritage. |
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The Black Female Body: A Photographic History
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Bringing together some 185 images that span three centuries, the authors offer counterpoints to these exploitive images, as well as testaments to a vibrant culture. Here are nineteenth century portraits of well-dressed and beautifully coifed creoles of color and artistic studies of dignified black women. Here are Harlem Renaissance photographs of entertainer Josephine Baker and writer Zora Neale Hurston.
Documenting the long struggle for black civil rights, the authors draw on politically pointed images by noted photographers like Dorothea Lange, Lewis Hine, and Gordon Parks. They also feature the work of contemporary artists such as Ming Smith Murray, Renee Cox, Coreen Simpson, Chester Higgins, Joy Gregory, and Catherine Opie, who photograph black women asserting their subjectivity, reclaiming their bodies, and refusing the representations of the past. |
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