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Lupita Nyong'o Covers Glamour Magazine's Women of the Year 2014 Issue

By goodblacknews on November 3, 2014

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Academy Award winner Lupita Nyong’o has been on a roll in 2014; in February, the actress won an Oscar for “12 Years a Slave” and has subsequently been popping up on “best dressed” and “most beautiful” lists ever since, in addition to becoming a beauty ambassador for Lancome and landing a role in the upcoming “Star Wars” reboot by JJ Abrams.

Nevertheless, in her interview with Glamour magazine, she tells the magazine the attention she’s received has been overwhelming.  “Right now I’m still adjusting. I guess I feel catapulted into a different place; I have a little whiplash,” she said. “I did have a dream to be an actress, but I didn’t think about being famous. And I haven’t yet figured out how to be a celebrity; that’s something I’m learning, and I wish there were a course on how to handle it.”

She couldn’t even imagine what winning the Oscar would be like, she observed.

“I don’t think I will ever be able to really articulate how bizarre it was to hear my name at the Academy Awards. I’d watched in my pajamas the year before!” she said. “I felt numb — dazed and confused. I remember feeling light — weightless. More like limbo than cloud nine.”

Nyong’o, who was born in Mexico of Kenyan parents, mentions that she didn’t know success on this level would be possible for a woman with darker skin.  For her, Oprah Winfrey wasn’t just a role model but a “reference point,” and seeing Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg in “The Color Purple” was key to her belief that she could become successful.

She hopes she can have the same effect on people who see her.

“I’ve heard people talk about images in popular culture changing, and that makes me feel great, because it means that the little girl I was, once upon a time, has an image to instill in her that she is beautiful, that she is worthy,” she said. “Until I saw people who looked like me, doing the things I wanted to, I wasn’t so sure it was a possibility.”

The December issue of Glamour will be available on newsstands November 11.

article by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (follow @lakinhutcherson)

Art Project "Funk, God, Jazz & Medicine" Celebrates Black Heritage in Brooklyn This Weekend

By goodblacknews on October 8, 2014
“Funk, God, Jazz & Medicine: Black Radical Brooklyn” (Credit: Todd Heisler/The New York Times)

New York City so knows how to lose — and save, and lose again — its history. Among notable rescues of the past several decades were material remains of the vanished 19th-century African-American village of Weeksville in Brooklyn, snatched from the jaws of 1960s urban renewal. Once in parts of what are now Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights, the village is currently getting fresh and needed attention in an art project organized by the Weeksville Heritage Center and Creative Time called “Funk, God, Jazz & Medicine: Black Radical Brooklyn,” which runs Friday through Sunday (October 10-12).

Spread over four sites, the project roughly maps the footprint of the original settlement. More important, it strengthens the memory of a local past that could easily be swallowed up by gentrification.

The village was named for James Weeks, an ex-slave from Virginia who came to New York in 1838. His intention was to create a community of landowning African-Americans at a time when such ownership was a requirement for voting. The plan took hold. By the time of the Civil War, the village had more than 500 residents, two churches, a school, an orphanage, an old-age home, a cemetery and its own newspaper, The Freedman’s Torchlight. Blacks fleeing the draft riots in Manhattan in 1863 sought refuge there and stayed. But after the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge, with a swelling in the general population, Weeksville was gradually absorbed into newer communities that surrounded it.

In 1968, four of the village’s 19th-century wood-frame houses were rediscovered, in derelict shape, on an oddly angled street that had once been a section of Hunterfly Road in Weeksville, and before that, an American Indian trail. The area was scheduled for demolition, but after community pressure, the houses were declared city landmarks. Restored, they are now part of the Heritage Center, which encompasses vegetable and flower gardens and, as of 2013, an education building with an auditorium and classrooms.

The Black Victorians: Astonishing Portraits Unseen for 120 Years on Exhibit in London Through November

By goodblacknews on September 16, 2014
Member of the African choir
Discovered … Member of the African Choir, London Stereoscopic Company, 1891. (Photograph: Courtesy of © Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The African Choir were a group of young South African singers that toured Britain between 1891 and 1893. They were formed to raise funds for a Christian school in their home country and performed for Queen Victoria at Osborne House, a royal residence on the Isle of Wight. At some point during their stay, they visited the studio of the London Stereoscopic Company to have group and individual portraits made on plate-glass negatives. That long-lost series of photographs, unseen for 120 years, is the dramatic centrepiece of an illuminating new exhibition called Black Chronicles II.
“The portraits were last shown in the London Illustrated News in 1891,” says Renée Mussai, who has co-curated the show at London’s Rivington Place alongside Mark Sealy MBE, director of Autograph ABP, a foundation that focuses on black cultural identity often through the use of overlooked archives. “The Hulton Archive, where they came from, did not even know they existed until we uncovered them while excavating their archive as part of my PhD project.”
The London Stereoscopic Company specialised in carte de visites – small photographs printed on cards that were often traded by collectors or used by performers for publicity purposes – and, as their name suggests, they were all in stereo which, when seen through a special viewer, gave the illusion of a three-dimensional photograph.
The enlarged portraits of the African Choir, which line one wall of the exhibition, were made by Mike Spry, a specialist in printing from glass plates who was coaxed out of retirement to undertake the meticulous process in his garden shed. They are arresting both for the style and assurance of the sitters – some of the women look like they could be modelling for Vogue – and for the way they challenge the received narrative of the history of black people in Britain.
“Black Chronicles II is part of a wider ongoing project called The Missing Chapter,” says Mussai, “which uses the history of photography to illuminate the missing chapters in British history and culture, especially black history and culture. There is a widespread misconception that black experience in Britain begins with the arrival of the Empire Windrush and the first Jamaican immigrants in 1948, but, as this exhibition shows, there is an incredible archive of images of black people in Britain that goes right back to the invention of photography in the 1830s.”
Near the African choir shots, there is an equally striking portrait of Major Musa Bhai, a Ceylon-born Muslim who was converted to Christianity in colonial India. He accompanied the family of William Booth, founder of theSalvation Army, to England in 1888 as a high-profile advocate for the organisation. As Mussai notes, there “are several intertwining narratives – colonial, cultural and personal – embedded in these images, but what is often startling is how confident and self-contained many of the sitters are as they occupy the frame.”

Sara Forbes Bonetta. Brighton, 1862.
Sara Forbes Bonetta. Brighton, 1862. (Photograph: Courtesy of Paul Frecker collection/The Library of Nineteenth-Century Photography)

Black Chronicles II is punctuated by several such surprising shots, some of well-known people but many of ordinary individuals caught up in the indiscriminate sweep of colonial and postcolonial history. Among the former is Sara Forbes Bonetta, perhaps the most celebrated black British Victorian, who was photographed by two pre-eminent portrait photographers, Camilla Silvy and Julia Margaret Cameron.
Captured aged five by slave raiders in west Africa, Forbes Bonetta was rescued by Captain Frederick E Forbes, then presented as a “gift” to Queen Victoria. Forbes, who rechristened the child after his ship, the Bonetta, later wrote of the proud moment when he realised that Forbes Bonetta “would be a present from the King of the Blacks to the Queen of the Whites.”
More haunting is the portrait of Dejazmatch Alamayou Tewodros, an Ethiopian prince who was orphaned at the age of seven, when his father died rather than surrender to the British troops that had surrounded his castle in what was then Abyssinia. Alamayou was brought to England by Sir Robert Napier and adopted by the intriguingly named explorer Captain Tristram Speedy. Alamayou died in England of pleurisy in 1879.

Angela Bassett Wows in Violet Grey Magazine's Lingerie Photo Shoot

By goodblacknews on August 9, 2014

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Academy-Award nominated actress Angela Bassett is bringing sexy back, and at the age of 55 it looks better than ever!
In her new feature photo shoot for the beauty and fashion magazine Violet Grey, Angela goes bold in sexy black lingerie and talks about what it takes to be a woman of strength.  But being the star she is, she opens up about her most vulnerable times and how she see herself when she looks in the mirror.
Check out some of the highlights and more pics below:
On what she sees when she looks in the mirror:
A passionate woman who knows what she loves and has been blessed to be able to do it…and continue to do it!
Angela Bassett2
On when she’s most vulnerable:
When I’m told I can’t do something. When I’m told I’m not good enough, that I can’t have something, can’t go somewhere, especially because of the color of my skin.
On being a strong woman and if she always comes out on top:
Not with everything, but that’s when you stick out your chest and you gather your strength. I was raised by my mother, and she taught me how! You can’t be in this industry if you’re afraid of a little rejection.
Her advice for aspiring actors:
It’s the same with everything: You have to study your craft. Actresses make it look easy because that’s the way it should look—effortless. When a great actor does their job they’re leaving a piece of their soul in the room. It takes a little out of you, but that’s okay. Life will take a little out of you, love will take a little out of you. We’re talking about demonstrating the best and worst of the human experience.
On the best date to have to an event:
A friend or a sister. I mean, the husband is always great, but there is something about a girlfriend…
angela bassett (violet grey)
Angela Bassett3
Check out the entire interview at Violet Grey

 article via eurthisnthat.com

National Museum of African American History to Display Photos of the Gullah People

By goodblacknews on March 30, 2014
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Miss Bertha, 1977 (JEANNE MOUTOUSSAMY-ASHE/NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY AND CULTURE)

The collection is haunting: black-and-white stills of another place from another time, a documentation of the Gullah, or Geechee, people—a population of African descendants living on the Sea Islands off the Eastern coastline.  The images of a place and a people that time forgot were captured by celebrated photographer Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe—the wife of renowned tennis player Arthur Ashe—between 1977 and 1981.

Bank of America donated the collection of more than 60 photos to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. The photographs center on the people and life of Daufuskie Island, a cultural and national treasure tucked away off the coast of South Carolina.
A “time capsule” is how the island was aptly described by Lonnie Bunch, the museum’s founding director, who is thrilled at the addition to the yet-to-be-finished museum.  In addition to the stunning collection, which Bank of America originally obtained through its acquisition of Merrill Lynch in 2007, the financial institution also donated $1 million toward the building of the museum, a $500 million project.
“We’ve had a great history with the [museum]. We were one of the first donors [and have a] long-standing partnership,” Bank of America spokeswoman Diane Wagner told The Root. “[The collection] seemed like a very natural fit to be donated to the museum as one of their key exhibitions once they open in 2015.
“We feel that the arts have the power to connect people and … can connect people across cultures, across geography and socioeconomic status … People can take a look at art and understand a different culture, or they can understand their heritage, where they come from and how they’ve been established,” she added.

First Lady Michelle Obama's Valentines Day Message to the President on Instagram

By goodblacknews on February 14, 2014

Michelle Obama Sends Valentines Day Message to the President Obama on InstagramHappy Valentine’s Day from America’s first couple!  The Oval Office is decidedly more heart-shaped today as Michelle Obama posted a Valentine’s Day message to her husband on Instagram.   “Hey Barack, I’ll always be your valentine! #HappyValentinesDay,” she wrote, next to three photos of herself and the president laughing and embracing.
The president and first lady are famously affectionate with each other year-round. But this year, they’re actually not planning anything major for Valentine’s Day – mostly because Michelle’s 50th birthday celebrations last month were so extensive.
“He celebrated me so well – he did a great job,” Michelle told Ryan Seacrest on his radio show this week. “I had a great couple of weeks, so I think we’re going to low-key it for Valentine’s Day. It feels like we just finished celebrating my birthday so I think we’ll low-key it.”

article by Tim Nudd via people.com

Vanity Fair's 2014 Hollywood Issue Features Biggest Display of Diversity in its Cover History

By goodblacknews on February 4, 2014
Julia Roberts poses with (fromt lef) Chiwetel Ejiofor, Idris Elba and George Clooney on the March cover of Vanity Fair.
Julia Roberts poses with (front left) Chiwetel Ejiofor, Idris Elba and George Clooney on the March cover of Vanity Fair. (ANNIE LEIBOVITZ EXCLUSIVELY FOR VANITY FAIR)
Vanity Fair released a sneak peek of its 20th annual Hollywood Issue on Monday, and it may be the most groundbreaking one yet.  The magazine has apparently taken steps toward emphasizing the diversity of Hollywood. For the first time since it began putting out the annual special in 1995, six of the 12 celebrated thespians gracing the 2014 cover are not white.  The magazine has come under fire in the past for an apparent lack of diversity. Just a few years ago, as Buzzfeed has pointed out, a 2010 the cover featured nine actresses — all white, thin and under 40 years old.
Over the years the annual selection has included one or two minority actors — such as Angela Bassett in 1995, and Lucy Liu and Salma Hayek in 2004 — but this year’s edition shows how expansive the African-American film scope has grown across several genres.
(From left): Chiwetel Ejiofor, Julia Roberts, Idris Elba, George Clooney, Michael B. Jordan, Jared Leto, Lupita Nyong’o, Naomie Harris, Brie Larson, Chadwick Boseman, Margot Robbie and Léa Seydoux.
From left: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Julia Roberts, Idris Elba, George Clooney, Michael B. Jordan, Jared Leto, Lupita Nyong’o, Naomie Harris, Brie Larson, Chadwick Boseman, Margot Robbie and Léa Seydoux. (ANNIE LEIBOVITZ EXCLUSIVELY FOR VANITY FAIR)

Among those featured on the three-panel foldout are many of Hollywood’s most heralded actors of the past year, including Oscar nominees Julia Roberts, for August: Osage County, Jared Leto, who is the front-runner in his Best Supporting Actor category for Dallas Buyers Club, and Chiwetel Ejiofor and Lupita Nyong’o from 12 Years A Slave.

Fantasy Hollywood: Restaging Classic Films with Black Models

By goodblacknews on January 30, 2014
Black Hollywood Breakfast
Breakfast at Onomo’s, 2013. Photograph: Antoine Tempé

Back in the 80s, my classmates and I piled into Mbabane’s local cinema to watch Top Gun. We’d turn to each other, channeling our best version of Val Kilmer to spout “You can be my wing man anytime” – followed by intense laughter. Who doesn’t have a favourite line, an iconic moment from film lodged in our minds? 

Dakar-based photographers Omar Victor Diop and Antoine Tempé were counting on just that, the shared experience and ubiquity of film, when the hotel group Onomo International invited them to create a series of photographs using the hotel as a backdrop. They turned to the silver screen, to iconic moments they’ve held onto to and mined for their collaborative project, ONOMOllywood.
In 20 images that pay homage to characters such as Truman Capote’s Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, these reinventions begin with the a humble “what if…” A question looking to how popular global cultural translates to the local, what could it look like, and what new memories would it create. The project has created conversation, accolades and blowback, but in an interview with Another Africa, Diop takes it all in stride.
Black Hollywood American Beauty
American Beauty, 2013. Photograph: Omar Victor Diop

Missla Libsekal | Representational art usually puts artists in the hot seat, audiences tend to have strong opinions. For example Samuel Fosso’s self-portraits as famous political figures or Pieter Hugo’s Nollywood series. Mimicry steps on the nerve of nostalgia, the sacred or even challenges the status quo. What tale doesONOMOllywood tell and does it hit any nerves? 
Omar Victor Diop | ONOMOllywood is a celebration of cinema, as an artistic discipline and of the magic of a great movie. For Antoine Tempé (the co-author of the series who created 10 out of the 20 images) and myself, what makes a great movie is the fact that the strength of its characters, plot and scenes transcends all geographic, temporal and racial barriers. A great movie is more than a series of sequences, it becomes a moment that is lived across the globe by people who have very little in common, but who relate to extraordinary stories that allow them to dream.
The example I always give is the magic of a James Bond movie; back when I was a kid, I didn’t care whether Roger Moore was white or black, or whether I was a British citizen… to me, he was a hero I could impersonate. After watching A View To A Kill, I firmly believed my pajamas were a tuxedo and that my mom’s kitchen was actually some concrete jungle where I would chase after criminals… That’s what cinema has brought to me and it still somehow does, to my adult life. A great movie is a dream.

Black Hollywood Psycho
Psycho, 2013. Photograph: Antoine Tempé

ONOMOllywood did hit some nerves, especially in the US: after one of my interviews was published on CNN.COM. We were taken aback by the racial dimension of some readers’ comment. To my great surprise, I realised that this series could be seen by some as a sort of “revenge” of black people against a too “white” Hollywood. The “race war” in the comments section was quite epic! 
It was rather amusing to see the way some readers resolutely eluded the fact that this project is the product of a collaboration between a French-American photographer and a Senegalese photographer. It was “just some black dude painting Hollywood in black because the world looked better like this”.
I guess this can be explained by a set of contextual factors. The article about ONOMOllywood was published in late July 2013, after a heated debate over a series of race-related affairs like the Trayvon Martin case in the US, a series of blackface incidents in fashion magazines in Europe, etc. I guess people from both sides were already prepared to shoot at anything that could be seen as an attempt to see the world from a racial perspective… Interesting experience indeed, we’re glad this project started a conversation in other continents, that’s the purpose of art, even though for us, ONOMOllywood remains a celebration, a well deserved homage to geniuses of cinema, to timeless moments.

Black Hollywood Frida
Frida, 2013. Photograph: Omar Victor Diop

10 Tips for Managing Your Digital Photos

By goodblacknews on January 14, 2014
Digital cameras make it easy to take way too many photos during the holidays or on that wonderful trip to Costa Rica. How do you keep them from becoming a growing electronic pile on your hard drive? We asked photographers, professional organizers and others how they manage.
1. Make time. Carve out a regular time to download new photos — daily (during prime-time TV) or weekly (first thing on Saturdays). Just make it routine.
2. Clean as you go. “As you upload, take the time to delete any photos that you are sure you will not want to keep,” said Suzanne O’Donnell of My LA Organizer. It could save you grief and hard drive space in the long run.
3. Back up and store long term. “Transfer photos off your computer to an external hard drive, cloud or online gallery to save space,” said Ashley Stanfield of Creatively Neat. Again, a routine is key. “I recommend twice a year, or every daylight savings.”
4. Develop a labeling system and stick to it. “Part of the organization is knowing beforehand how you’d like to divide up your images,” said Joey Honsa of Brass Tacks Organization in Los Angeles. Develop a naming system for photo folders. Many professionals start folder names with the year, month and date, then subject. Examples: 2013-12-25-Christmas-Morning or 20131210-tokyo. Start with the year, so when folders are sorted alphabetically, they will appear in chronological order.
5. Consider software. Our experts recommended Adobe Lightroom. Price: $149. There are free alternatives, but they aren’t as flexible or sophisticated. Windows users can rename files in batches by highlighting all the photos in a folder (or simultaneously pressing Control and F4). Right click on the first file and select “Rename.” Type in your new file name and hit Enter. All the highlighted photos will be renamed sequentially, as in: 131210-11 tokyo (1), 131210-11 tokyo (2), and so on.

Three African-Americans Earn MacArthur Fellowships in 2013

By goodblacknews on September 25, 2013
Three African-American fellows have been named to this year's MacArthur Fellows. Pictured from left-right are Kyle Abraham, Tarell McCraney and Carrie Mae Weems. (Photos courtesy of The MacArthur Foundation)
Three African-American fellows have been named to this year’s MacArthur Fellows. Pictured from left-right are Kyle Abraham, Tarell McCraney and Carrie Mae Weems. (Photos courtesy of The MacArthur Foundation)

Twenty-four talented individuals were recognized Wednesday morning after they were named the 2013 class of MacArthur fellows – an honor given to an extraordinary group made up of individuals who have achieved much success in their personal creative pursuits.  This year, three African-Americans — Kyle Abraham, Tarell McCraney and Carrie Mae Weems – have been identified by the MacArthur Foundation and join the group of fellows who are each awarded $625,000 to use as they wish towards their creative visions.
“This year’s class of MacArthur Fellows is an extraordinary group of individuals who collectively reflect the breadth and depth of American creativity,” said Cecilia Conrad, Vice President, MacArthur Fellows Program.  “They are artists, social innovators, scientists, and humanists who are working to improve the human condition and to preserve and sustain our natural and cultural heritage. Their stories should inspire each of us to consider our own potential to contribute our talents for the betterment of humankind.”
In particular, the work of these three visonaries attempts to teach lessons and transform the ideas associated with the African-American experience.  Abraham is a New-York-based dancer and choreographer whose work is often inspired by some of his childhood memories growing up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.