According to nytimes.com, Deana Lawson, professor of visual arts in the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University in New Jersey, has been awarded the Hugo Boss Prize. Professor Lawson is the first photographer to win the award, which comes with a $100,000 prize.
The prize, presented by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and sponsored by the Hugo Boss German fashion label, has been awarded biannually since 1996 and was established to “embrace today’s most innovative and critically relevant cultural currents.”
The Hugo Boss prize is considered among the most prestigious awards within the contemporary art world.
Lawson began teaching at Princeton in 2012. Earlier she taught at the California College of Arts in San Francisco, the International Center for Photography in New York, and the Rhode Island School of Design. Her photographs speak to the ways that sexuality, violence, family, and social status may be written, sometimes literally, on the body.
A native of Rochester, New York, Professor Lawson is a graduate of Pennsylvania State University. She earned a master of fine arts degree from the Rhode Island School of Design.
More than half a century after the groundbreaking exhibit “The Negro Woman,” the image announcing the show by the African-American collective Kamoinge still captivates. Taken by Louis Draper, who had a keen sense of light and shadow, the photograph shows an older black woman standing on a busy Harlem street corner. In the crowd, her face is finely in focus. She is tired, gazing off into the distance, as she waits, with serious dignity and grace.
It was an everyday scene that in its own way was extraordinary. Led by the astute chronicler of Harlem life, Roy DeCarava, the show aimed to reclaim the beauty of the African-American woman. Kamoinge’s group exhibition was among the first to carefully and radically picture the black woman’s elegance and pride.
“Nothing like that had been done in the community before,” said Adger Cowans, the president and a co-founder of Kamoinge. “The black woman has been underrepresented. Here we are today and we are still looking at black women negatively. We wanted to show their beauty and power.”
Khadija. New York, 1998. (Credit: John Pinderhughes)
Decades after “The Negro Woman,” that same motivation has inspired Kamoinge’s new exhibit, “Black Women: Power and Grace,” at the National Arts Club in New York from May 28 to June 30. “With this exhibition we are showing our love and appreciation to our mothers, wives and sisters,” said Russell Frederick, a co-organizer of the exhibition and Kamoinge’s vice president. “I think black women, who have mostly been objectified in the media, have actually made a major mark on society that really can’t be quantified but has gone unrecognized.”
“What Do They Call Me, My Name Is Aunt Sara.” Self-portrait.(Credit: Delphine Fawundu)
Women of New York. 2017. (Credit: Delphine Diallo)
The show includes several intimate portraits by Mr. Russell that examine traditional notions of beauty and Anthony Barboza’s images of black models, like a bald and beautiful Pat Evans, that affirm them. Among the show’s earliest works is Mr. Cowan’s “Untitled (Betty Shabazz).” Taken in 1965, the black-and-white picture shows Ms. Shabazz coming out the back of a Harlem church where the funeral service for her husband Malcolm X had been held. In an indelible image of strength and loss, Ms. Shabazz’s face is veiled in black lace as a single tear rolls down her cheek.
“That picture meant something to me because my whole universe stood still,” said Mr. Cowan, 81. “It was very emotional for me, she was as big in my eyes as Malcolm. It was important for people to see this image because this woman carried the weight of the world on her shoulders and you can see it on her face.”
Since 2016, the photo collective, founded in 1963, has made an effort to expand ranks — historically dominated by male photographers — with younger, female artists. The group’s new black female members, including the French-Senegalese portraitist Delphine Diallo, join a small company of women like Ming Smith, the first black woman photographer to have her work collected by the Museum of Modern Art.
Betty Shabazz at the funeral for her husband, Malcom X. Harlem, N.Y., 1965. (Credit: Adger Cowans)
“Black Women: Power and Grace” also features other female newcomers. Lola Flash has two pictures that bring visibility to the black lesbian community; a 2010 Delphine Fawundu self portrait, “What Do They Call Me, My Name Is Aunt Sara,” challenges us to rethink the names we call black women; and Laylah Amatullah Barrayn’s images explore spiritual practice in Senegal.
“I’ve been watching Kamoinge for most of my career and I’ve seen its growth,” Ms. Barrayn said. “I always felt being a part of Kamoinge was so far-fetched because there weren’t many women in the group.”
Kamoinge’s mission-oriented pictures are populated with individual narratives that have long come together to shape the complex diversity of black women.
“The challenge is to see her differently,” Mr. Frederick said. “We really embrace today’s black woman, who she is and even those who came before her like Maya Angelou, Maxine Waters and Dionne Warwick, who are all holding hands in Eli Reed’s picture.
“Black women have broken barriers, been torch bearers and pioneers,” Mr. Frederick continued. “And at the same time, they have always looked out for all of us in the neighborhood, taking us to church, making Sunday dinner and always having our back.”
The photographer Don Hogan Charles in New York in the late 1960s. Among his better-known photographs was one taken in 1964 of Malcolm X holding a rifle as he peered out the window of his Queens home. (Photo Credit: The New York Times)
Don Hogan Charles, who was the first black photographer to be hired by The New York Times, and who drew acclaim for his evocative shots of the civil rights movement and everyday life in New York, died on Dec. 15 in East Harlem. He was 79.
His niece Cherylann O’Garro, who announced the death, said his family did not yet know the cause.
In more than four decades at The Times, Mr. Charles photographed a wide range of subjects, from local hangouts to celebrities to fashion to the United Nations. But he may be best remembered for the work that earned him early acclaim: his photographs of key moments and figures of the civil rights era.
In 1964, he took a now-famous photograph, for Ebony magazine, of Malcolm X holding a rifle as he peered out of the window of his Queens home. In 1968, for The Times, he photographed Coretta Scott King, her gaze fixed in the distance, at the funeral of her husband, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Mr. Charles resisted being racially pigeonholed but also considered it a duty to cover the movement, said Chester Higgins, who joined The Times in 1975 as one of its few other black photographers.
“He felt that his responsibility was to get the story right, that the white reporters and white photographers were very limited,” Mr. Higgins, who retired in 2015, said in a telephone interview.
Even in New York, historically black neighborhoods like Harlem, where Mr. Charles lived, were often covered with little nuance, said James Estrin, a longtime staff photographer for The Times and an editor of the photojournalism blog Lens. But Mr. Charles, through his photography, provided readers a fuller portrait of life throughout those parts of the city, Mr. Estrin said.
“Few people on staff had the slightest idea what a large amount of New York was like,” he added. “He brought this reservoir of knowledge and experience of New York City.”
Malcolm X (Credit: Don Hogan Charles)
Exacting and deeply private, Mr. Charles came off as standoffish to some. But to others, especially many women, he was a supportive mentor.
“He’s going to give you the bear attitude, but if you look past that he was something else,” said Michelle Agins, who met Mr. Charles while she was a freelance photographer in Chicago and he was working in The Times’s bureau there.
The two reconnected when she joined The Times as a staff photographer in 1989.
“When you’re a new kid at The New York Times and you needed a big brother, he was all of that,” she said. “He was definitely the guy to have on your team. He wouldn’t let other people bully you.”
Mr. Charles took Ms. Agins under his wing, and she was not alone. “I’ve had many women photographers tell me that he stood up for them,” Mr. Estrin said.
That may be because Mr. Charles knew the hardships that came with belonging to a group that was underrepresented in the workplace.
At one Thanksgiving dinner decades ago, Ms. O’Garro said, he tearfully described the pain he felt on arriving at a New York City store for an assignment, only to be asked to come in through a back entrance. She added that while covering the civil rights movement in the South, he would often check the tailpipe of his vehicle for explosives.
Despite those obstacles, Mr. Charles went on to have a long career at The Times, covering subjects including celebrities like John Lennon and Muhammad Ali and New York institutions like the United Nations. In 1996, four of his photographs were included in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art on a century of photography from The Times.
Daniel James Charles (he later went by Donald or Don) was born in New York City on Sept. 9, 1938. His parents, James Charles and the former Elizabeth Ann Hogan, were immigrants from the Caribbean, Ms. O’Garro said.
After graduating from George Washington High School in Manhattan, he enrolled at the City College of New York as an engineering student before dropping out to pursue photography, although at the time it was just a hobby. He worked as a freelance photographer before joining The Times in 1964. He retired in 2007.
Mr. Charles never married and had no children. No immediate family members survive, though he was close with his three nieces and one nephew.
An amateur photographer from Baltimore is being celebrated for his photos taken during the recent demonstrations in the name of Freddie Gray. His images are so touching, in fact, that the 26-year-old’s work is featured on the latest cover of TIME Magazine. Devin Allen’s photos were first spotted on Instagram and spread from celebrities’ profiles (like Rihanna) to international organizations. The father of one, who has explored photography for three years, says he’s heartened by how his photos are being embraced online. After being circulated earlier this week, his image of a protester running from a huge amount of police was chosen as the cover of TIME.
“For me, who’s from Baltimore city, to be on the cover of TIME Magazine, I don’t even know what to say. I’m speechless,” says Allen. “It’s amazing. It’s life changing for me. It’s inspiring me to go further. It gives me hope and it gives a lot of people around me hope. After my daughter, who’s my pride and joy, this is the best thing that’s happened to me.”
Baltimore-based photographer Devin Allen
On why he began to take part in the protests, Allen says he’s witnessed injustices in his hometown long before Freddie Gray died at the hands of police officers earlier this month.
“[It’s] not been a surprise,” says Allen. “I know my city. With all the frustration with the city, the mayor, the economy, the pot has been boiling.” But that has not changed Allen’s resolve to show exactly what’s been happening in his streets. “I went in thinking I would show the good, the bad and the ugly,” he says. “Of course, since I’m a black man, I understand the frustration, but at the same time, I’m a photographer. I’m not going to lie to you. I’m going to tell you exactly what happened. That was the goal.”
Many more of Allen’s images have captured national attention, including somber moments between protesters and cops, children marching, and others. You can check them out here. article by Desire Thompson via newsone.com
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.
