Race Stories: Essays by Maurice Berger The Race Stories column, published monthly for the Lens Section of The New York Times, was a continuing exploration of the relationship of race to photographic portrayals of race by CADVC Research Professor and Chief Curator, Dr. Maurice Berger.The column is the recipient of the 2018 Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography and the 2014 Arts Writers Grant from Creative Capital | Andy Warhol Foundation. To read student reflections on this series from UMBC’s Association of Black Artists (ABA), click here. Photograph by Bruce W. Talamon of the Jacksons, 1976. Maurice Berger on Race Stories My monthly column for the Lens Section of the New York Times—Race Stories—consists of well-researched essays that are written in a literary and reader-friendly style. Since I began writing for the Times in July 2012, reaching hundreds of thousands of readers, my work has explored a range of subjects and photographers, predominantly work from the civil rights era to the present. My principal objective in Race Stories is to explore the relationship of photography to concepts, themes, or social or regional issues around race not usually covered in the mainstream media. My writing for the Times—an aspect of my work at CADVC as Research Professor—has focused on a multiple issues: contemporary African American art and photography; the modern civil rights movement; Latino/a, Asian-American, and Native American photography; Asian and African photography; 19th-century and civil war era race photography, and parallel developments in Latino and Asian American photography during the period of the modern civil rights movement and beyond, including the ways artists and photographers of color have employed photography to combat stereotypes and prevailing ideas about race and identity in the United States. Race Stories Archive Zanele Muholi: Paying Homage to the History of Black Women 3 December 2018 Through self-portraits, Zanele Muholi reimagines black identity and challenges the oppressive standards of beauty that often ignore people of color. Read Moreexternal link The Holocaust’s Paradox of Good and Evil, in Photographs 19 November 2018 In her dark and evocative images, Judy Glickman Lauder explores the contrast between the reality of hate, the possibility of defeating it and photography’s role in spurring change. Read Moreexternal link Capturing the Struggle for Racial Equality, Past and Present 15 October 2018 Sheila Pree Bright chronicles the longstanding and continuing legacy of black activism in her new book, “#1960Now.” Read Moreexternal link Gordon Parks on Poverty, the ‘Most Savage of Human Afflictions’ 10 September 2018 Mr. Parks realized the power of empathy to help people understand poverty. In this 1961 photo essay, he took readers inside the lives of a Brazilian boy, Flavio da Silva, and his family, who lived in a favela in the hills outside Rio de Janeiro. Read Moreexternal link Chronicling the Virtuosity and Struggles of 1970s Soul and Funk Musicians 27 August 2018 Bruce W. Talamon photographed some of music’s brightest stars for a decade. He considers himself “a visual caretaker of black folks’ history.” Read Moreexternal link The Quiet Heroism of Arthur Ashe 27 August 2018 In his photographs of Arthur Ashe’s historic victory at the 1968 US Open, John G. Zimmerman depicted the athlete as he lived, a complex and self-possessed man in the midst of a life-altering event. Read Moreexternal link Revealing the Lives of Black Fathers 6 August 2018 Robyn Price Pierre looked to her family, classmates and friends to create personal photos exploring black fatherhood. Read Moreexternal link Escaping to Freedom, in the Shadows of the Night 7 July 2018 A new series by the photographer Dawoud Bey summons a time in African-American history when the journey to freedom was made largely under cover of night. Read Moreexternal link These 1970s Pageants Celebrated Black Women’s Beauty 14 June 2018 For some women, members of West London’s Afro-Caribbean communities, pageants nurtured racial pride and self-expression. Read Moreexternal link 50 Years After Their Mug Shots, Portraits of Mississippi’s Freedom Riders 15 May 2018 The journalist and photographer Eric Etheridge provides visual and oral histories of the courageous men and women known as the Freedom Riders in the 1960s. Read Moreexternal link Dr. King’s Complex Relationship with the Camera 30 March 2018 The most compelling photographs of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were neither idealized nor simplistic, but endeavored to portray his complexity and humanity. Read Moreexternal link Documenting the Dynamic Black Community of 1940s Seattle 27 March 2018 In the 1940s, Al Smith documented a heroic period for Seattle jazz in the integrated establishments of Jackson Street, where African-American performers and customers were embraced. Read Moreexternal link An Elegy to India’s Vanishing Cinemas 7 February 2018 Nandita Raman spent three years photographing the decline of India’s single-screen movie houses for her series “Cinema Play House.” Read Moreexternal link A Photographer’s Search for the Magic in Everyday Life 9 January 2018 Shawn Walker, a founding member of the Kamoinge Workshop, documented the lives of regular people and liberated his subjects from stereotypes and invisibility. Read Moreexternal link Using Photography to Tell Stories About Race 6 December 2017 Maurice Berger, a research professor and curator, looks back on the events that led him to write about race and photography. Read Moreexternal link Finding Inspiration in the Struggle at Resurrection City 24 October 2017 Jill Freedman left behind a career in advertising to live at Resurrection City, an encampment on the National Mall that was part of the Poor Peoples Campaign. Her pictures show a different, human and optimistic side to a historical event that has been labeled a failure by some. Read Moreexternal link Making Chicano Life Visible 14 September 2017 A new exhibition at the Autry Museum of the American West documents the relatively unknown story of photography’s important role in the Chicano movement. Read Moreexternal link The Cinematic Images of Gordon Parks 28 August 2017 Gordon Parks, perhaps more than any mid-20th-century photographer, understood how film and television conditioned the contemporary eye and mind. Read Moreexternal link The Faces of Bigotry: When the Hoods Come Off 21 August 2017 The pictures from Charlottesville, Va., reveal what pictures of oppression and violence generally do not: the ordinary people who typically perpetuate white supremacy. Read Moreexternal link In Brooklyn, Three Generations in Family Photos 11 July 2017 In “Mitochondria,” Nona Faustine celebrates the lives of three generations of African-American women living under one roof. Read Moreexternal link Black Soldiers: Fighting America’s Enemies Abroad and Racism at Home 5 June 2017 A book documents the complex history of African American soldiers, illuminating their triumphs and challenges. Read Moreexternal link Jamel Shabazz’s 40-Years of Sights and Styles in New York 2 May 2017 Four decades ago, Jamel Shabazz set out to photograph black and Latino young people in New York City and explore the uplifting power of style, fashion, music and culture. Read Moreexternal link The Lasting Power of Emmett Till’s Image 5 April 2017 The controversy over a white artist’s painting of Emmett Till’s corpse raises issues of appropriation without historical context. Read Moreexternal link From Slavery to Freedom: Revealing the Underground Railroad 29 March 2017 While much has been written about the Underground Railroad, there has been little visual documentation. But a new photo book depicts the 1,400 mile long trek through forests, swamps, safe houses, and freedom in the north. Read Moreexternal link Rarely Seen Photos of Japanese Internment 8 February 2017 Dorothea Lange’s photographs of Japanese Americans interned during World War 2 capture not only the oppression of a people but also their struggle to retain their dignity. Read Moreexternal link A Photographer Who Made “Ghosts” Visible 11 January 2017 A major retrospective of the work of Ming Smith, a member of the Kamoinge Collective, showcases images that summon up dreamlike states that tease out complex emotions and ideas. Read Moreexternal link The Heartbeat of Our Being, in Black and White 20 December 2016 Whether depicting the spectacle of people barreling forward in a snowstorm or the faces of his subjects, mostly black but also white, Adger Cowans’ lyrical images portray life as resonant with feeling. Read Moreexternal link Black Male Glamour, as Style and Substance 1 December 2016 In “Vintage Black Glamour: Gentlemen’s Quarters,” Nichelle Gainer explores how prominent and accomplished black men shaped their image through personal style, taking charge of how they were seen to defy stereotypes. Read Moreexternal link Photographing Civil Rights, Up North and Beyond 18 October 2016 While the most indelible images from the civil rights era were of protest and conflict in the South, a new book explores the discrimination African-Americans struggled against in the North and elsewhere. Read Moreexternal link On the Streets of Harlem, a Sense of ‘Erase and Replace’ 11 October 2016 Dawoud Bey’s large-scale photos of Harlem show the legendary cradle of African-American life confronting speculation, displacement and gentrification. Read Moreexternal link Reconsidering the Black Panthers, Through Photos 8 September 2016 A book and exhibit document the complexities of the Black Panther Party, a storied group that the F.B.I. once deemed “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.” Read Moreexternal link Whiteness and Race, Between the Storms 11 August 2016 Pete Mauney asks viewers to look at race relations through white eyes in order to confront unspoken privilege and the lack of diversity in their lives. Read Moreexternal link Photographs that Challenge Stereotypes about African American Youth 19 July 2016 Picturing Children, the latest in a series of books published by the Smithsonian’s soon-to-open National Museum of African American History and Culture, resonates with the joy, contentment, resistance, determination, dissent and the routines of everyday African-American life. Read Moreexternal link Black Dandies, Style Rebels with a Cause 16 June 2016 The traveling exhibit “Dandy Lion” presents striking images of dapper men of African descent whose sartorial flair challenges notions of race and masculinity. Read Moreexternal link Why Chinatown Still Matters 16 May 2016 Dean Wong’s new book on Chinese-American communities is a powerful corrective to decades of reporting on neighborhoods often represented in the cultural mainstream as exotic, insular or irrelevant. Read Moreexternal link Lee Friedlander’s Overlooked Civil Rights Photographs 16 February 2016 A new book shows how before Lee Friedlander became known as the quintessential street photographer, he chronicled an important — if sometimes overlooked — moment in civil rights history. Read Moreexternal link Kamoinge’s Half Century of African American Photography 22 January 2016 A new book takes a look at the collective’s groundbreaking work in “speaking of our lives as only we can.” Read Moreexternal link The Modern Spirits of Ebony and Jet 3 December 2015 Images of the empty interiors at the modernist headquarters of the Johnson Publishing Company uncannily embody the spirit of the groundbreaking African-American company that occupied the building for 40 years. Read Moreexternal link Gordon Parks’s Harlem Argument 11 November 2015 A look at Gordon Parks’s first photo essay for Life shows how editors’ choices of words and pictures can manipulate meaning. Read Moreexternal link Photographing Japan, Through Shadows of the Past 6 October 2015 Ishiuchi Miyako came of age in postwar Japan, in a town where she was caught between the lure of American pop culture and the fear of the military occupation that accompanied it. Read Moreexternal link A Meditation on Race, in Shades of White 17 September 2015 Marion Palfi set out to document racism and segregation in Georgia in the 1940s. Her unpublished manuscript that followed reveals racial attitudes that were neither uniform nor without ambivalence. Read Moreexternal link In China, the Photobook as Art and History 30 July 2015 An ambitious survey of China’s rich and diverse history of photobooks represents a turning point in narrowing the comprehension gap between East and West. Read Moreexternal link Making a Confederate Flag Invisible 30 June 2015 Removing the Confederate flag from the public square is but a first step toward deeper reflection on race. Read Moreexternal link Past and Present Collide in Pittsburgh 2 June 2015 Sometimes it takes a connection to the past to better understand the present. For essayists exploring African-American life in Pittsburgh, a trove of 80,000 photos taken by Charles “Teenie” Harris proves a great inspiration. Read Moreexternal link African-American Life, Double-Exposed 17 April 2015 Through the African American Lens, culled from a Smithsonian collection, shows how photography – and black photographers – reshaped a people’s image. Read Moreexternal link Documenting Selma, from the Inside 2 March 2015 The best-known images of the civil rights era were often dramatic and shocking, intentionally so, to jar a nation into action. But James Barker provided a quieter, insider’s perspective to the daily struggle. Read Moreexternal link Complicating the Picture of Urban Life 23 February 2015 A new exhibit features three Bronx-born photographers whose work explores the idea of community while challenging outdated, lingering notions. Read Moreexternal link Robert Frank, Telling it like it Was 15 January 2015 Robert Frank’s favorite image from “The Americans” captures the contradiction of racism in the liberal climes of mid-century San Francisco. Read Moreexternal link Finding Robert Frank, Online 14 January 2015 A new online resource from the National Gallery allows viewers to explore its vast collection of Robert Frank’s work – from contact sheets to ephemera. Read Moreexternal link American Culture, Riding a Mushroom Cloud 24 December 2014 In “Chewing Gum and Chocolate,” Shomei Tomatsu explored the attractions and contradictions of American culture and the military in postwar Japan. Read Moreexternal link When Glamour Speaks Your Name 28 November 2014 A new book by Nichelle Gainer, Vintage Black Glamour, looks at the history of how black women used style and substance to counter stereotypes — or invisibility — in the mainstream. Read Moreexternal link A Limited View of Boys from the Bronx 22 October 2014 Examining Stephen Shames’s new book “Bronx Boys,” Maurice Berger raises questions about the responsibilities inherent in documenting a community. Read Moreexternal link LaToya Ruby Frazier’s Notion of Family 14 October 2014 LaToya Ruby Frazier looked at her family’s history to build an enduring narrative of African-American life in the Rust Belt town where she was raised. Read Moreexternal link Black Fathers, Present and Accountable 19 September 2014 Zun Lee has produced a photo book that challenges the persistent narrative that African-American fathers are absent from the lives of their children. Read Moreexternal link In Ferguson, Photographs as Powerful Agents 20 August 2014 The history of black representation has resonated with the types of images now prevalent in social media. Whether in 1950s Mississippi or Ferguson today, the camera has served as witness, provocateur and agent of change. Read Moreexternal link Meditation on President Obama’s Portrait 25 July 2014 A portrait of Barack Obama before he became president reveals an unguarded moment in the life of a very private man. Read Moreexternal link What the Camera Sees, and Doesn’t See 27 June 2014 A life-changing illness led Kim Weston to return to her roots, both in art and family, exploring the ties between relatives and the past. Read Moreexternal link Latin Americas Mutating Cities, in Photographs 16 May 2014 An ambitious new exhibit shows the many transformations – social, physical and cultural – that have remade Latin America. Read Moreexternal link A Cultural History of Civil Rights 10 May 2014 A recent book chronicles the artistic and cultural efforts that were an essential – if overlooked – part of the civil rights movement. Read Moreexternal link Holding a Mirror to Race 24 March 2014 A new website uses vintage photos — presented at first without context — to get viewers to confront everyday assumptions about race. Read Moreexternal link Born by a River, Watching the Change 21 February 2014 For some, Braddock, Pa., embodies the decline of the small Rust Belt town. For LaToya Ruby Frazier, it is home, which she explores in a series of elegiac images. Read Moreexternal link Black Performers, Fading from Frame, and Memory 22 January 2014 Carrie Mae Weems’s series “Slow Fade to Black” plays on the concept of the cinematic fade, showing mid-20th century female black performers “disappearing, dissolving before our eyes.” Read Moreexternal link Pictures of Men, Friends or Lovers 10 January 2014 A collection of images of African-American men together, from the Civil War to the present, challenges modern discomfort with male intimacy, sexual or otherwise. Read Moreexternal link One Drop, but Many Views on Race 16 December 2013 A series of portraits and an accompanying book argue that racial identity is not merely biological or genetic, but also a matter of context and even personal choice. Read Moreexternal link A Civil Rights Photographer, and a Struggle, are Remembered 14 November 2013 By chronicling the Delano grape strike in California in the 1960s, Jon Lewis exposed the harrowing story of labor behind the fruits and vegetables that Americans consumed without thought. Read Moreexternal link Anonymous Men, Made Real 7 October 2013 An exhibition seeks to restore the humanity and immediacy of the soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Army, the first black regiment raised in the North during the Civil War. Read Moreexternal link Re-imagining a Tragedy, 50-Years Later 13 September 2013 Dawoud Bey explores the relationship of past to present with diptychs of people the same age as the victims of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing — both at the time of the bombings and in the present day. Read Moreexternal link A Momentous Day Driven by Ordinary People 22 August 2013 The photography of Leonard Freed, whose images explored the March on Washington at ground level, still resonates 50 years after that historic day. Read Moreexternal link A Russian American Photographer in Native Alaska 17 July 2013 In southeastern Alaska at the turn of the 20th century, a Russian-American photographer’s intimate understanding of his community was a prerequisite for photographing it. Read Moreexternal link The Woman in a Jim Crow Photo 6 June 2013 Gordon Parks documented some of the quieter, but no less compelling or important, moments of the civil rights struggle. Decades later, one of his subjects recalls a poignant image. Read Moreexternal link Civil Rights, One Person and One Photo at a Time 22 April 2013 In the midst of the national struggle for civil rights, James Karales, born into an immigrant Greek family in Ohio, turned his camera on the individuals fighting for rights and respect. Read Moreexternal link Framing—and Reflecting—Beauty 11 March 2013 A photo in Deborah WIllis’s new exhibit shows a woman holding a mirror inside a beauty parlor. It underscores how African-Americans have constructed their image to empower themselves. Read Moreexternal link Images of Emancipation 20 December 2012 A new book argues that photography was not incidental but central to the war against slavery, racism and segregation in the 1850s through the 1930s. Read Moreexternal link Lynchings in the West, Erased from History and Photos 6 December 2012 Seeking to underscore a seemingly absent history, Ken Gonzales-Day altered 19th and 20th century postcards of lynchings in the American West, removing the bodies from the original scenes. Read Moreexternal link Malcolm X as Visual Strategist 19 September 2012 Malcolm X was keenly aware of the power of images to transform the 20th century. Read Moreexternal link A Radically Prosaic Approach to Civil Rights Images 16 July 2012 Gordon Parks’s photographs of blacks in the South at the height of the Jim Crow era showed African-Americans living “in a complete universe.” Many, however, were unpublished or unseen until now. Read Moreexternal link
Zanele Muholi: Paying Homage to the History of Black Women 3 December 2018 Through self-portraits, Zanele Muholi reimagines black identity and challenges the oppressive standards of beauty that often ignore people of color. Read Moreexternal link
The Holocaust’s Paradox of Good and Evil, in Photographs 19 November 2018 In her dark and evocative images, Judy Glickman Lauder explores the contrast between the reality of hate, the possibility of defeating it and photography’s role in spurring change. Read Moreexternal link
Capturing the Struggle for Racial Equality, Past and Present 15 October 2018 Sheila Pree Bright chronicles the longstanding and continuing legacy of black activism in her new book, “#1960Now.” Read Moreexternal link
Gordon Parks on Poverty, the ‘Most Savage of Human Afflictions’ 10 September 2018 Mr. Parks realized the power of empathy to help people understand poverty. In this 1961 photo essay, he took readers inside the lives of a Brazilian boy, Flavio da Silva, and his family, who lived in a favela in the hills outside Rio de Janeiro. Read Moreexternal link
Chronicling the Virtuosity and Struggles of 1970s Soul and Funk Musicians 27 August 2018 Bruce W. Talamon photographed some of music’s brightest stars for a decade. He considers himself “a visual caretaker of black folks’ history.” Read Moreexternal link
The Quiet Heroism of Arthur Ashe 27 August 2018 In his photographs of Arthur Ashe’s historic victory at the 1968 US Open, John G. Zimmerman depicted the athlete as he lived, a complex and self-possessed man in the midst of a life-altering event. Read Moreexternal link
Revealing the Lives of Black Fathers 6 August 2018 Robyn Price Pierre looked to her family, classmates and friends to create personal photos exploring black fatherhood. Read Moreexternal link
Escaping to Freedom, in the Shadows of the Night 7 July 2018 A new series by the photographer Dawoud Bey summons a time in African-American history when the journey to freedom was made largely under cover of night. Read Moreexternal link
These 1970s Pageants Celebrated Black Women’s Beauty 14 June 2018 For some women, members of West London’s Afro-Caribbean communities, pageants nurtured racial pride and self-expression. Read Moreexternal link
50 Years After Their Mug Shots, Portraits of Mississippi’s Freedom Riders 15 May 2018 The journalist and photographer Eric Etheridge provides visual and oral histories of the courageous men and women known as the Freedom Riders in the 1960s. Read Moreexternal link
Dr. King’s Complex Relationship with the Camera 30 March 2018 The most compelling photographs of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were neither idealized nor simplistic, but endeavored to portray his complexity and humanity. Read Moreexternal link
Documenting the Dynamic Black Community of 1940s Seattle 27 March 2018 In the 1940s, Al Smith documented a heroic period for Seattle jazz in the integrated establishments of Jackson Street, where African-American performers and customers were embraced. Read Moreexternal link
An Elegy to India’s Vanishing Cinemas 7 February 2018 Nandita Raman spent three years photographing the decline of India’s single-screen movie houses for her series “Cinema Play House.” Read Moreexternal link
A Photographer’s Search for the Magic in Everyday Life 9 January 2018 Shawn Walker, a founding member of the Kamoinge Workshop, documented the lives of regular people and liberated his subjects from stereotypes and invisibility. Read Moreexternal link
Using Photography to Tell Stories About Race 6 December 2017 Maurice Berger, a research professor and curator, looks back on the events that led him to write about race and photography. Read Moreexternal link
Finding Inspiration in the Struggle at Resurrection City 24 October 2017 Jill Freedman left behind a career in advertising to live at Resurrection City, an encampment on the National Mall that was part of the Poor Peoples Campaign. Her pictures show a different, human and optimistic side to a historical event that has been labeled a failure by some. Read Moreexternal link
Making Chicano Life Visible 14 September 2017 A new exhibition at the Autry Museum of the American West documents the relatively unknown story of photography’s important role in the Chicano movement. Read Moreexternal link
The Cinematic Images of Gordon Parks 28 August 2017 Gordon Parks, perhaps more than any mid-20th-century photographer, understood how film and television conditioned the contemporary eye and mind. Read Moreexternal link
The Faces of Bigotry: When the Hoods Come Off 21 August 2017 The pictures from Charlottesville, Va., reveal what pictures of oppression and violence generally do not: the ordinary people who typically perpetuate white supremacy. Read Moreexternal link
In Brooklyn, Three Generations in Family Photos 11 July 2017 In “Mitochondria,” Nona Faustine celebrates the lives of three generations of African-American women living under one roof. Read Moreexternal link
Black Soldiers: Fighting America’s Enemies Abroad and Racism at Home 5 June 2017 A book documents the complex history of African American soldiers, illuminating their triumphs and challenges. Read Moreexternal link
Jamel Shabazz’s 40-Years of Sights and Styles in New York 2 May 2017 Four decades ago, Jamel Shabazz set out to photograph black and Latino young people in New York City and explore the uplifting power of style, fashion, music and culture. Read Moreexternal link
The Lasting Power of Emmett Till’s Image 5 April 2017 The controversy over a white artist’s painting of Emmett Till’s corpse raises issues of appropriation without historical context. Read Moreexternal link
From Slavery to Freedom: Revealing the Underground Railroad 29 March 2017 While much has been written about the Underground Railroad, there has been little visual documentation. But a new photo book depicts the 1,400 mile long trek through forests, swamps, safe houses, and freedom in the north. Read Moreexternal link
Rarely Seen Photos of Japanese Internment 8 February 2017 Dorothea Lange’s photographs of Japanese Americans interned during World War 2 capture not only the oppression of a people but also their struggle to retain their dignity. Read Moreexternal link
A Photographer Who Made “Ghosts” Visible 11 January 2017 A major retrospective of the work of Ming Smith, a member of the Kamoinge Collective, showcases images that summon up dreamlike states that tease out complex emotions and ideas. Read Moreexternal link
The Heartbeat of Our Being, in Black and White 20 December 2016 Whether depicting the spectacle of people barreling forward in a snowstorm or the faces of his subjects, mostly black but also white, Adger Cowans’ lyrical images portray life as resonant with feeling. Read Moreexternal link
Black Male Glamour, as Style and Substance 1 December 2016 In “Vintage Black Glamour: Gentlemen’s Quarters,” Nichelle Gainer explores how prominent and accomplished black men shaped their image through personal style, taking charge of how they were seen to defy stereotypes. Read Moreexternal link
Photographing Civil Rights, Up North and Beyond 18 October 2016 While the most indelible images from the civil rights era were of protest and conflict in the South, a new book explores the discrimination African-Americans struggled against in the North and elsewhere. Read Moreexternal link
On the Streets of Harlem, a Sense of ‘Erase and Replace’ 11 October 2016 Dawoud Bey’s large-scale photos of Harlem show the legendary cradle of African-American life confronting speculation, displacement and gentrification. Read Moreexternal link
Reconsidering the Black Panthers, Through Photos 8 September 2016 A book and exhibit document the complexities of the Black Panther Party, a storied group that the F.B.I. once deemed “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.” Read Moreexternal link
Whiteness and Race, Between the Storms 11 August 2016 Pete Mauney asks viewers to look at race relations through white eyes in order to confront unspoken privilege and the lack of diversity in their lives. Read Moreexternal link
Photographs that Challenge Stereotypes about African American Youth 19 July 2016 Picturing Children, the latest in a series of books published by the Smithsonian’s soon-to-open National Museum of African American History and Culture, resonates with the joy, contentment, resistance, determination, dissent and the routines of everyday African-American life. Read Moreexternal link
Black Dandies, Style Rebels with a Cause 16 June 2016 The traveling exhibit “Dandy Lion” presents striking images of dapper men of African descent whose sartorial flair challenges notions of race and masculinity. Read Moreexternal link
Why Chinatown Still Matters 16 May 2016 Dean Wong’s new book on Chinese-American communities is a powerful corrective to decades of reporting on neighborhoods often represented in the cultural mainstream as exotic, insular or irrelevant. Read Moreexternal link
Lee Friedlander’s Overlooked Civil Rights Photographs 16 February 2016 A new book shows how before Lee Friedlander became known as the quintessential street photographer, he chronicled an important — if sometimes overlooked — moment in civil rights history. Read Moreexternal link
Kamoinge’s Half Century of African American Photography 22 January 2016 A new book takes a look at the collective’s groundbreaking work in “speaking of our lives as only we can.” Read Moreexternal link
The Modern Spirits of Ebony and Jet 3 December 2015 Images of the empty interiors at the modernist headquarters of the Johnson Publishing Company uncannily embody the spirit of the groundbreaking African-American company that occupied the building for 40 years. Read Moreexternal link
Gordon Parks’s Harlem Argument 11 November 2015 A look at Gordon Parks’s first photo essay for Life shows how editors’ choices of words and pictures can manipulate meaning. Read Moreexternal link
Photographing Japan, Through Shadows of the Past 6 October 2015 Ishiuchi Miyako came of age in postwar Japan, in a town where she was caught between the lure of American pop culture and the fear of the military occupation that accompanied it. Read Moreexternal link
A Meditation on Race, in Shades of White 17 September 2015 Marion Palfi set out to document racism and segregation in Georgia in the 1940s. Her unpublished manuscript that followed reveals racial attitudes that were neither uniform nor without ambivalence. Read Moreexternal link
In China, the Photobook as Art and History 30 July 2015 An ambitious survey of China’s rich and diverse history of photobooks represents a turning point in narrowing the comprehension gap between East and West. Read Moreexternal link
Making a Confederate Flag Invisible 30 June 2015 Removing the Confederate flag from the public square is but a first step toward deeper reflection on race. Read Moreexternal link
Past and Present Collide in Pittsburgh 2 June 2015 Sometimes it takes a connection to the past to better understand the present. For essayists exploring African-American life in Pittsburgh, a trove of 80,000 photos taken by Charles “Teenie” Harris proves a great inspiration. Read Moreexternal link
African-American Life, Double-Exposed 17 April 2015 Through the African American Lens, culled from a Smithsonian collection, shows how photography – and black photographers – reshaped a people’s image. Read Moreexternal link
Documenting Selma, from the Inside 2 March 2015 The best-known images of the civil rights era were often dramatic and shocking, intentionally so, to jar a nation into action. But James Barker provided a quieter, insider’s perspective to the daily struggle. Read Moreexternal link
Complicating the Picture of Urban Life 23 February 2015 A new exhibit features three Bronx-born photographers whose work explores the idea of community while challenging outdated, lingering notions. Read Moreexternal link
Robert Frank, Telling it like it Was 15 January 2015 Robert Frank’s favorite image from “The Americans” captures the contradiction of racism in the liberal climes of mid-century San Francisco. Read Moreexternal link
Finding Robert Frank, Online 14 January 2015 A new online resource from the National Gallery allows viewers to explore its vast collection of Robert Frank’s work – from contact sheets to ephemera. Read Moreexternal link
American Culture, Riding a Mushroom Cloud 24 December 2014 In “Chewing Gum and Chocolate,” Shomei Tomatsu explored the attractions and contradictions of American culture and the military in postwar Japan. Read Moreexternal link
When Glamour Speaks Your Name 28 November 2014 A new book by Nichelle Gainer, Vintage Black Glamour, looks at the history of how black women used style and substance to counter stereotypes — or invisibility — in the mainstream. Read Moreexternal link
A Limited View of Boys from the Bronx 22 October 2014 Examining Stephen Shames’s new book “Bronx Boys,” Maurice Berger raises questions about the responsibilities inherent in documenting a community. Read Moreexternal link
LaToya Ruby Frazier’s Notion of Family 14 October 2014 LaToya Ruby Frazier looked at her family’s history to build an enduring narrative of African-American life in the Rust Belt town where she was raised. Read Moreexternal link
Black Fathers, Present and Accountable 19 September 2014 Zun Lee has produced a photo book that challenges the persistent narrative that African-American fathers are absent from the lives of their children. Read Moreexternal link
In Ferguson, Photographs as Powerful Agents 20 August 2014 The history of black representation has resonated with the types of images now prevalent in social media. Whether in 1950s Mississippi or Ferguson today, the camera has served as witness, provocateur and agent of change. Read Moreexternal link
Meditation on President Obama’s Portrait 25 July 2014 A portrait of Barack Obama before he became president reveals an unguarded moment in the life of a very private man. Read Moreexternal link
What the Camera Sees, and Doesn’t See 27 June 2014 A life-changing illness led Kim Weston to return to her roots, both in art and family, exploring the ties between relatives and the past. Read Moreexternal link
Latin Americas Mutating Cities, in Photographs 16 May 2014 An ambitious new exhibit shows the many transformations – social, physical and cultural – that have remade Latin America. Read Moreexternal link
A Cultural History of Civil Rights 10 May 2014 A recent book chronicles the artistic and cultural efforts that were an essential – if overlooked – part of the civil rights movement. Read Moreexternal link
Holding a Mirror to Race 24 March 2014 A new website uses vintage photos — presented at first without context — to get viewers to confront everyday assumptions about race. Read Moreexternal link
Born by a River, Watching the Change 21 February 2014 For some, Braddock, Pa., embodies the decline of the small Rust Belt town. For LaToya Ruby Frazier, it is home, which she explores in a series of elegiac images. Read Moreexternal link
Black Performers, Fading from Frame, and Memory 22 January 2014 Carrie Mae Weems’s series “Slow Fade to Black” plays on the concept of the cinematic fade, showing mid-20th century female black performers “disappearing, dissolving before our eyes.” Read Moreexternal link
Pictures of Men, Friends or Lovers 10 January 2014 A collection of images of African-American men together, from the Civil War to the present, challenges modern discomfort with male intimacy, sexual or otherwise. Read Moreexternal link
One Drop, but Many Views on Race 16 December 2013 A series of portraits and an accompanying book argue that racial identity is not merely biological or genetic, but also a matter of context and even personal choice. Read Moreexternal link
A Civil Rights Photographer, and a Struggle, are Remembered 14 November 2013 By chronicling the Delano grape strike in California in the 1960s, Jon Lewis exposed the harrowing story of labor behind the fruits and vegetables that Americans consumed without thought. Read Moreexternal link
Anonymous Men, Made Real 7 October 2013 An exhibition seeks to restore the humanity and immediacy of the soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Army, the first black regiment raised in the North during the Civil War. Read Moreexternal link
Re-imagining a Tragedy, 50-Years Later 13 September 2013 Dawoud Bey explores the relationship of past to present with diptychs of people the same age as the victims of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing — both at the time of the bombings and in the present day. Read Moreexternal link
A Momentous Day Driven by Ordinary People 22 August 2013 The photography of Leonard Freed, whose images explored the March on Washington at ground level, still resonates 50 years after that historic day. Read Moreexternal link
A Russian American Photographer in Native Alaska 17 July 2013 In southeastern Alaska at the turn of the 20th century, a Russian-American photographer’s intimate understanding of his community was a prerequisite for photographing it. Read Moreexternal link
The Woman in a Jim Crow Photo 6 June 2013 Gordon Parks documented some of the quieter, but no less compelling or important, moments of the civil rights struggle. Decades later, one of his subjects recalls a poignant image. Read Moreexternal link
Civil Rights, One Person and One Photo at a Time 22 April 2013 In the midst of the national struggle for civil rights, James Karales, born into an immigrant Greek family in Ohio, turned his camera on the individuals fighting for rights and respect. Read Moreexternal link
Framing—and Reflecting—Beauty 11 March 2013 A photo in Deborah WIllis’s new exhibit shows a woman holding a mirror inside a beauty parlor. It underscores how African-Americans have constructed their image to empower themselves. Read Moreexternal link
Images of Emancipation 20 December 2012 A new book argues that photography was not incidental but central to the war against slavery, racism and segregation in the 1850s through the 1930s. Read Moreexternal link
Lynchings in the West, Erased from History and Photos 6 December 2012 Seeking to underscore a seemingly absent history, Ken Gonzales-Day altered 19th and 20th century postcards of lynchings in the American West, removing the bodies from the original scenes. Read Moreexternal link
Malcolm X as Visual Strategist 19 September 2012 Malcolm X was keenly aware of the power of images to transform the 20th century. Read Moreexternal link
A Radically Prosaic Approach to Civil Rights Images 16 July 2012 Gordon Parks’s photographs of blacks in the South at the height of the Jim Crow era showed African-Americans living “in a complete universe.” Many, however, were unpublished or unseen until now. Read Moreexternal link
