On an April Sunday in an artfully cluttered Harlem apartment, a group of photographers leaned over a coffee table, jazz playing softly in the background. Radcliffe Roye was about to present some work.
“We’re not finished,” said Adger W. Cowans, the vice president of the group. “You think I’m going to take this laying down?” The others had just finished critiquing Mr. Cowans’s work. In defense, he wanted to talk about some images he shot “back in the day.”
Intimate Moments in the African Diaspora
By KERRI MACDONALD May 31, 2011, 5:00 am
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Russell Frederick, one of the group’s younger members, cut in. “Back in the day, because we weren’t born,” he said, laughing.
“When you were younger and sharper,” said the group’s president, Anthony Barboza, sitting at the other end of the table. The room erupted.
Someone else chimed in. “You could see!”
Jerry Jack “Snow Bench.”
This is Kamoinge, a group of mostly New York photographers who strive to capture the black experience. Members of the collective, which came together in 1963, are working to create an archive of their work and maintain the Kamoinge name.
The name comes from a word in the Kikuyu language of Kenya meaning a group of people acting together. Kamoinge is an assorted group that embraces different styles and viewpoints. Some of the current 24 members focus on documentary work, others on fine art. Some have multiple allegiances. Eli Reed, for instance, is a Magnum photographer.
They are all driven by a similar passion: honest portrayal.
“What we’re documenting isn’t just black history,” said Mr. Frederick, one of Kamoinge’s newer members. “It’s American history; it’s global history. It’s something that everybody needs to see. It has been about dignity. It has been about our people. It’s about capturing what has been taking place within the community and a people misunderstood.”
Kamoinge may not be a household name in a lot of households. But the group has made its mark. Henri Cartier-Bresson and Edward Steichen both took note of Kamoinge’s work. Langston Hughes was a mentor.
For a short period in its early years, Kamoinge had a gallery in a brownstone on West 137th Street. But most meetings over the years have taken place in apartments and studios — and, for a time, at the home of Hughes, who collaborated with Roy DeCarava on a 1955 book of poetry and photography, “The Sweet Flypaper of Life.”
DeCarava, who died in 2009, was the group’s first director. “One of the things that got to me,” he told The New York Times in 1982, ”was that I felt that black people were not being portrayed in a serious and in an artistic way.”
Kamoinge’s motto — “We wish to speak on our lives as we believe only we can” — is about the sensitivity required for that type of portrayal. “We live this life so we can better interpret it through our photographs,” Mr. Barboza said. “We look for the positive side of us as a people.”
June DeLairre Truesdale “Black Angel With Cigar.” 2008.
Shawn Walker, the host of the April meeting and one of the group’s founding members, felt misrepresented by the media while growing up in Harlem. Like other early members of Kamoinge, he hoped to counteract a representation that often focused on what he called “the bourgeoisie of black people.”
His education came from shooting on a weekly basis with Kamoinge. Other artists, Mr. Walker said, had to travel to Paris and the Sorbonne for their education. “We were fortunate. We had Harlem and we had Kamoinge.”
Mr. Walker recalled Cartier-Bresson’s visit to the Kamoinge gallery in the 1960s. “We were worried about him being in Harlem at night,” he said. “I’ll never forget this. He reached in his pocket and pulled out one the biggest knives we’ve ever seen. He just showed us the knife and said, ‘I don’t bother anybody.’ ”
Out of this rich photographic history, Kamoinge remains focused on the present. All its members, including those who started in the ’60s, are still shooting. In 2007, for the first time, the group received a grant to produce an exhibit, “The Face of Katrina,”which highlighted the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Mr. Roye, who used to shoot for The Associated Press, was one of the organizers.
“There’s so many stories within the diaspora that Kamoinge would love to tackle,” Mr. Roye said. “Art is a breathing, vibrant movement that enacts change.”
Right now, along with working on their archive and producing a coming book, the invitation-only group is considering a pool of potential new members, including more women.
The first woman to be invited into Kamoinge was Ming Smith, who joined in the 1970s. The second was Toni Parks. Collette Fournier was the third, about eight or nine years ago, followed by June DeLairre Truesdale and Salimah Ali.
“They’re people that you can bounce ideas off of,” Ms. Fournier said of Kamoinge. They are also spiritual. Artistic. And, as they were at Mr. Walker’s house, gently critical.
To put it succinctly, she said, “They’re a professional family.”
Eli Reed. Operating a public toilet at a marketplace. Lagos, Nigeria. 2010.
Prints of photographs by Kamoinge members are available through The New York Times Store.
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Hello poster. can i know where is that snow bench located?, would like to visit it. thanks you