(l. to r.) Through A Lens Darkly Producer/Writer Don Perry, Artist Shawn Walker, Manhattan Borough President Gale A. Brewer, Photographer Ming Smith, Photographer Kwame Brathwaite, and Filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris
It is gratifying to see our film Through A Lens Darkly continuing the work of Deborah Willis and Reflections in Black – inspiring the appreciation of African-American photographers in our communities across the nation and the globe!
Manhattan Borough President Gale A. Brewer hosted a Black History Month reception with Through A Lens Darkly at NYC’s MIST Harlem on Monday February 29 and presented awards to three Harlem photographers: Shawn Walker, Ming Smith, and Kwame Braithwaite. For one of these legendary photographers, this was their very first award! Following the reception, a film screening with more than 300 people was held of Thomas Allen Harris‘ NAACP award winning documentary Through A Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People, exploring the role of photography in shaping the identity, aspirations, and social emergence of African Americans to celebrate Black History Month.
“Manhattan is a global center of the arts, and Harlem is a vital part of why that’s true. This Black History Month, it’s my privilege to recognize some of Harlem’s amazing photographers, who are chronicling the world around them.”- Manhattan Borough President Gale A. Brewer
Honorees:
Shawn Walker continues to shoot and exhibit around the globe more than fifty years after he joined with other photographers to establish the Kamoinge Workshop. He has exhibited in museums and cultural institutions throughout the world, including the Smithsonian, the Schomburg Center, the Brooklyn Museum, the Whitney Museum, the International Center of Photography, the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Harvard University School of Art and Design.
“Windows at 57th Street, NY.” Oct. 30, 2011. Photo by Shawn Walker
Ming Smith is known for her informal, in-action portraits of black cultural figures, from Alvin Ailey to Nina Simone and a wide range of jazz musicians. She was an early member of the Kamoinge Workshop, an association of several generations of black photographers. Ming has traveled extensively, showing her viewers a cosmopolitan world filled with famous landmarks and extraordinary landscapes. People continue to be her most treasured subjects. This is most apparent in her series depicting African American life.
America seen through Stars and Stripes, New York City, 1976. Photo by Ming Smith
Kwame Brathwaite has been considered the ever-present “photo-documentarian” of the Black Arts & Culture movement, the “keeper of the images.” He started as a jazz photographer after helping to form the African Jazz-Art Society and Studios (AJASS) along with his brother, the late activist Elombe Brath, and other young like-minded artists in 1956. AJASS combined art, music, fashion, poetry, theatre and political activism into what became the beginning of the Black Arts Movement of the 60s.
James Brown. Photo by Kwame Brathwaite
Thank you to Russell Frederick and Penelope Cox for their work on helping to select the awardees!
Check out press coverage by The Amsterdam News!
Full house screening of Through A Lens Darkly after the ceremony at Mist theater
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