You’ve heard the expression “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Photos have the ability to tell complex stories, convey important information and elicit emotional responses from viewers who may know nothing of the subject matter. One frame can change the world. Think of the iconic photographs that have come to symbolize a movement, a way of being or a slice of life.
Joe Rosenthal’s “Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima“; Moneta Sleet Jr.’s “Deep Sorrow,” featuring Coretta Scott King at the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr.; James Van Der Zee’s photo of black nationalist and pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey; Elizabeth “Tex” Williams’ war photographs; Art Kane’s “A Great Day in Harlem“; Gordon Parks’ “American Gothic“; Carrie Mae Weems’ “Kitchen Table Series“; and Jean Moutoussamy-Ashe’s photo book, Daddy and Me, featuring images of her late husband, tennis legend and civil rights activist Arthur Ashe, with their daughter, Camera.
Photos offer us a peek into unknown worlds and, in some cases, worlds we know all too well. Chronicling our lives and society, they capture history and the profound experiences of a complex world. The Johnson Publishing Co.’s Ebony Collection, now available to the public for the first time, does just that. This historic photo archive offers 2,000 photos taken over the last 70 years, documenting the rich and layered black experience in the United States.
Shaka Camera of Oakland has been a leather worker for over 43 years, specializing in hand stitched and hand tooled leather bags. His designs are earthy with a sophisticated touch – his bags practical yet unusual. Shaka’s pouches, purses, bags, even computer cases are embellished with beads, shells, silver and bronze acquired from his multiple trips to Africa.
Radiating from Burkina Faso in West Africa, where he has family, he collects beautiful objects for his finished work from the Baoule, Tuareg and Dogon people. The Tuareg of the Saharan interior of North Africa are well known for their fine silver jewelry.
Shaka may incorporate Tuareg crosses and cowry shells with other adornments in what he calls a “mixed Pan-African” esthetic. The Tuareg cross translates into a protective symbol and cowry shells, which were used for centuries as a currency in Africa, represent wealth, new growth and abundance. Carrying a bag with such adornments may have value beyond its beauty!
Shaka, whose company is Bogolani Designs, will show his work at the 42nd annual KPFA Crafts Fair on Saturday and Sunday, Dec. 8 and 9, at the Concourse in San Francisco. His wife of 12 years, Amatula, will share his booth with her original clothing designs made with hand-woven fibers.
Mickalene Thomas: Qusuquzah, Une Trés Belle Négresse 2, part of the 2012 Art Basel
The 11th annual art carnival known as Art Basel Miami Beach is set to kick off next week and will feature Art Africa Miami as its cultural hub. The Miami Beach Convention Center will be hosting the showcase for more than 50 contemporary artists from the global African Diaspora from Dec. 6 to 9. Typically, Art Basel (which was founded in 1970) pulls from more than 250 leading art galleries from the U.S., Canada, Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia, exhibiting modern artworks by more than 2,000 artists. Until 2011, when Neil Hall — owner of TheUrbanCollective’s Art Africa Miami — stepped in, the main show hadn’t had black galleries represented.
Philip Kwame Apagya, Come on Board, 2000/2003 Courtesy of The Walther Collection
Arthur Walther,64, is a German-American art collector who began collecting artwork and photography in China in the early 1990′s. Following his retirement as a general partner at Goldman Sachs and the founding partner of the firm’s German operations, Walther focused on his collection. The wave of modernization and economic reform flooding through China resulted in artists recording and analyzing the changes that were occurring. As China competed more in the global market, Walther found himself shying away from their artists and collecting more work from contemporary African artists.
“A number of these [artworks] overlapped continuously,” Walther said at the exhibition of his latest exhibition, Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive, which is being shown at the Chelsea Arts Building in New York. “I collected Chinese art very slowly. In the nineties and early 2000, [Chinese art was] a real examination and investigation by the artist of society and of the transformations and of their histories. Which before didn’t happen to that degree [because art] was all propaganda and political.”
Gordon Parks was a master of many arts: photography, film making, music and fiction. But the world almost missed the opportunity to experience and enjoy his major contributions. Born on Nov. 30, 1912, to a family in Fort Scott, Kansas, that already included 14 other children, Parks was declared stillborn when his doctor couldn’t detect a heartbeat. Thanks to another doctor who thought to immerse him in cold water, which got his heart beating, he survived.
Parks, who taught himself photography with a used camera he bought for $7.50, led a life filled with firsts and major milestones, including shooting for Vogue and becoming the first Black photographer at Life magazine, where for two decades he documented the civil rights movement, race relations and urban life in America.
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater: Linda Celeste Sims and Glenn Allen Sims, with Jessye Norman, at right, at City Center. (Photo: Andrea Mohin/The New York Times)
On Wednesday evening Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater settled into City Center for its annual season with a nod to the past and a look to the future. Amid the din of shrill greetings — this was a gala, after all — Samuel Lee Roberts worked his way across the stage, jabbing the tips of his toes into the floor until his knees buckled and his spine contorted inelegantly. It was an arresting and, for Ailey, an unusual sight, yet few grasped that “Minus 16,” by the Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin, had even begun.
This introduction requires a dancer to perform an improvised solo rooted in Gaga, a method of training that focuses more on sensation than technique. In “Minus 16,” based on excerpts from Mr. Naharin’s past works and a welcome addition to last season’s repertory, dancers trade their customary expressions of joy or sorrow for impassive stares.
Fore presents twenty-nine emerging artists of African descent who live and work across the United States. Born between 1971 and 1987, the artists inFore work in diverse media, often blending artistic practices in new and innovative ways. While some artists create large-scale oil paintings, others draw on top of photographs, or combine sculpture and two-dimensional work. More than half of the works in Fore have never been exhibited publicly; some are site-specific and react directly to the Harlem neighborhood and its social landscape.
Fore is the fourth in a series of emerging artist exhibitions presented by the Studio Museum, following Freestyle (2001), Frequency (2005–06) andFlow (2008). This exhibition traces the development of artistic ideas sinceFlow, taking into account social, political and cultural conditions in the United States. Whether gathering and assembling everyday objects, referencing urban architecture and economies, or using film and video to mirror the transmission and reception of information through social media, the artists in Fore emphasize that contemporary art is deeply tied to its location, time and historical context. This exhibition investigates questions at the core of the Studio Museum’s mission, exploring art’s relationship to U.S. and global communities.
perFOREmance, two three-day performance presentations in December 2012 and February 2013, provides a platform for the new and commissioned performances in Fore.
Organized by Lauren Haynes, Naima J. Keith and Thomas J. Lax, Assistant Curators at the Studio Museum, Fore continues the Studio Museum’s mission as the nexus for artists of African descent, locally, nationally and internationally, and for work inspired by black culture.
Narcissister “Mannequin” Photo: Tony Stamolis
Firelei Báez / b. 1980, Santiago, Dominican Republic; Lives and works in New York, New York Sadie Barnette / b. 1984, Oakland, California; Lives and works in Los Angeles, California Kevin Beasley / b. 1985, Alexandria, Virginia; Lives and works in New York, New York Crystal Z. Campbell / b. 1980, Prince George’s County, Maryland; Lives and works in New York, New York and Amsterdam, The Netherlands Caitlin Cherry / b. 1987, Chicago, Illinois; Lives and works in New York, New York Jamal Cyrus / b. 1973, Houston, Texas; Lives and works in Houston, Texas Noah Davis / b. 1983, Seattle, Washington; Lives and works in Los Angeles, California Abigail DeVille / b. 1981, New York, New York; Lives and works in New York, New York Zachary Fabri / b. 1977, Miami, Florida; Lives and works in New York, New York Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle / b. 1987, Louisville, Kentucky; Lives and works in Los Angeles, California Steffani Jemison / b. 1981, Berkeley, California; Lives and works in New York, New York Yashua Klos / b. 1977, Chicago, Illinois; Lives and works in New York, New York Eric Nathaniel Mack / b. 1987, Columbia, Maryland; Lives and works in New York, New York Harold Mendez / b. 1977, Chicago, Illinois; Lives and works in Chicago, Illinois Nicole Miller / b. 1982, Tucson, Arizona; Lives and works in Los Angeles, California Narcissister / b. 1971, New York, New York; Lives and works in New York, New York Toyin Odutola / b. 1985, Ife, Nigeria; Lives and works in San Francisco, California Akosua Adoma Owusu / b. 1984, Alexandria, Virginia; Lives and works in Alexandria, Virginia and Ghana Jennifer Packer / b. 1984, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Lives and works in New York, New York Taisha Paggett / b. 1976, Los Angeles, California; Lives and works in Chicago, Illinois and Los Angeles, California Valerie Piraino / b. 1981, Kigali, Rwanda; Lives and works in New York, New York Nikki Pressley / b. 1982, Greenville, South Carolina; Lives and works in Los Angeles, California Jacolby Satterwhite / b. 1986, Columbia, South Carolina; Lives and works in New York, New York, and Provincetown, Massachussetts Sienna Shields / b. 1976, Rainbow, Alaska; Lives and works in New York, New York and Rainbow, Alaska Kianja Strobert / b. 1980, New York, New York; Lives and works in Hudson, New York Jessica Vaughn / b. 1983, Chicago, Illinois; Lives and works in New York, New York Cullen Washington Jr. / b. 1976, Alexandria, LA; Lives and works in New York, New York Nate Young / b. 1981, Phoenixville, Pennsylvania; Lives and works in St. Paul, Minnesota Brenna Youngblood / b. 1979, Riverside, California; Lives and works in Los Angeles, California
Fore is made possible thanks to Leadership Support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Major support provided by Jacques and Natasha Gelman Trust and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Additional support provided by the Ed Bradley Family Foundation.
Will.i.am carrying the i.am+ camera for iPhone 4 at the Ekocycle brand launch in New York in October
Will.I.am is set to launch a new line of accessories, named “i.am+,” for Apple’s iPhone. The Black Eyed Peas star, who was hired as a creative director for technology firm Intel last year, has created a collection of hardware which he insists will transform the cell phones.
The first product from his “i.am+” line is an accessory that clips onto an iPhone and transforms the eight megapixel smartphone camera into a 14 megapixel camera, which dramatically enhances the clarity and definition of the photographs. Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, he says: “We have our own sensor and a better flash. You dock you phone into our device and it turns you smartphone into a genius-phone. We take over the camera.”
Model poses for online shop African Lookbook (Image: African Lookbook)
A look book has the power to turn a fashion blogger into a spokesperson and an independent designer into a household name. But for entrepreneurs Aaron Kohn and Phil Sandick, starting African Lookbookin 2011 was just another way to share stories. “I was living in Botswana for a couple of years, and then it really hit me how powerful oral history is in bringing together underrepresented, or underreported, groups,” says Sandick, a law student at Northwestern University.
The online platform features exclusive interviews with leading African designers and creative entrepreneurs. The stories shared are a reflection of new and old design traditions, serving as a way to connect artistic narratives with leading universities and research institutions. But documenting oral histories is just one part of the site’s overall goal to expand the reach of African-made design products worldwide.
With African Lookbook, users are able to easily browse through a selection of carefully curated items such as a vintage crochet bag ora Merino wool sweater(often spotted on the streets of Johannesburg). BlackEnterprise.com caught up with the entrepreneurial duo to discuss the importance of African art, how they balance school with their venture, and how teamwork makes the dream work.
The thirty-five-year-old choreographer Kyle Abraham has come a long way in just a few years. In 2006, he established his company, Abraham.In.Motion, and since then has produced dances that have earned him awards and critical acclaim. In December, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre will première a work that it commissioned from him. For someone whose career has taken off in such a big way, though, he retains a strong connection to his Pittsburgh roots, and shows great integrity in his dance-making, both of which were evident in his newest work, “Pavement,” which Abraham presented recently at Harlem Stage.
Abraham, who is African-American, went to high school in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, a historically black neighborhood, and in several of his previous works he drew on his experiences there. For “Pavement,” he went back to 1991, to reimagine the film “Boyz n the Hood,” about gangs in South Central Los Angeles, which was released that summer. He used the film as a springboard for examining life in Pittsburgh’s African-American communities in the Hill District and East Liberty Homewood and reflecting on the state of the black American experience in the two decades since its release.
But Abraham’s conception was even more sweeping. He also wanted to look at the history that had preceded the strife represented in “Boyz n the Hood,” and found a pertinent source in “The Souls of Black Folk,” the 1903 book by W. E. B. Du Bois, whose essays became instrumental in African-Americans’ struggle for equality in the twentieth century. Du Bois’s text made no appearance in “Pavement,” but Abraham included a quote from it in the program, which hovered over the dance: “Men call the shadow prejudice, and learnedly explain it as a natural defense of culture against barbarism, learning against ignorance, purity against crime, the ‘higher’ against the ‘lower’ races.” In the light of Du Bois’s words from more than a century ago, the realities as depicted in the film are sobering. From the perspective of 1991, when the ravages of H.I.V., crack addiction, and gang genocide were entrenched, not much seems to have gone right.
