Hey to Your Mama N'em

Autoportraits, Samuel Fosso’s self-portrait as an African chief, 14 Febuary 2004

Samuel Fosso (b. Kunmba, Cameroon, 1962) opened his own photography studio, out of boredom, when he was only thirteen years old. Between 1975 and 1980, Fosso took a series of self-portraits to take up extra film leftover from the day’s work. He experimented with different backdrops, costumes and props. Eventually, the portraits would win him acclaim in the art world. His work has been shown in major international venues such as the Photographers’ Gallery in London and the Guggenheim Museum in New York. He now lives and works in Bangui, Central African Republic.

Alice Walker, photograph by Jean Weisinger, 1990

Oakland-based Jean Weisinger (b. 1954) is a self-taught artist. Since mid-1980s, she has made the political activities of African American women her focus. Audre Lord and Alice Walker are frequent subjects of hers. She has also explored the African diaspora, traveling to England, Amsterdam, Germany, Cuba, Australia, New Zealand, East Africa, Jamaica, Mexico, and the southern United States to document the lives of black people.

In the Deepest Embrace of the Night, Ricardo Rangel, 1970, from the series Our Nightly Bread

Photojournalist Ricardo Rangel (February 15, 1924 - June 11, 2009) used his pictures to shine a light on the cruelty and inhumanity of colonialism. In fact, many of Rangel’s photographs were banned until Mozambique’s independence in 1975.

Rangel’s famous series, Our Nightly Bread, is a photographic essay that focuses on the Rua Araújo, the red light district of Maputo, in the 1960s and early 1970s.

At the photographer’s funeral, Prime Minister Luisa Diogo praised him, noting that he had left “an indelible mark on the history of Mozambique.” His career spanned 60 years.

Black Panther Party member carrying “Free Huey” flag. Photograph by Jonathan Eubanks, 1969.

Jonathan Eubanks (b. 1927) is an Oakland, California photographer who is well known for chronicling the activities of the Black Panther Party as well as other social movements in the Bay area.

Railroad Crossing Guard (Richmond, Virginia), from the project The Negro in Virginia, 1938

Robert McNeill, photographer

Make a Wish (Bronx Slave Market, 170th Street, New York), 1938

Robert McNeill, photographer

Robert McNeill was born in Washington, D.C. in 1917. Through his lens, he explored the lives of African Americans in the mid-Atlantic region in the mid-twentieth century. In 1950, he closed his studio to become a photographer for the U.S. Department of State. When he retired in 1978, he was the chief of the State Department’s photography branch. McNeill died on May 27, 2005.

Dennis Morris Sister Cool, 1974 © Dennis Morris

Dr. Kenneth Montague/ The Wedge Collection

“Becoming” at the Nasher Museum of Art | The Studio Museum in Harlem

More on Dennis Morris via Filmsnotdead.com

At the young age of just 11, Dennis Morris started his photographic career, when one of his photographs landed on the front page of the Daily Mirror. A camera enthusiast since the age of 8, and known around his east end neighbourhood as ‘Mad Dennis’, as he preffered to take photos than to kick a football around. The Photograph that landed on the front cover of the Daily Mirror was one he took at a feisty PLO demonstration where after the sharp young Dennis took his film to a photo agency on Fleet Street who promptly sold it to the Daily Mirror for £16.

Bob Marley: A Rebel Life by Dennis Morris

British photographer Dennis Morris began his photographic career at the age of 11, when one a photograph he took at a PLO demonstration was featured on the front page of the Daily Mirror. His career skyrocketed when he left school in 1973 and joined Bob Marley’s world tour. The professional relationship between the young photographer and the reggae superstar continued until the Marley’s death in 1981. Morris’ images of Bob Marley are now iconic and he is one of the leading music photographers in the world.

England, from The Black Trans-Atlantic Experience project, 1989

Stephen Marc, photographer

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Stephen Marc (b. Rantoul, Illinois in 1954) is an award-winning photographer and digital montage artist. The focus of his work is the African diaspora and its many forms. He has published three books of his work: Urban Notions (1983), where he explored three black communities in Illinois; The Black Trans-Atlantic Experience: Street Life and Culture in Ghana, Jamaica, England and the United States (1992); and Passage on the Underground Railroad (2009). His Passage on the Underground Railroad is an interpretive program in the National Park Service’s National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom.

Bernice and Vernice Briddel. Snow Hill, Maryland, August 1979, from the series Southern Roads/City Pavements

1979/printed 1982

Roland L. Freeman, photographer

Smithsonian American Art Museum

A few galleries of Freeman’s work, along with additional information about the photographer, are available here.

South Capitol Street at M Street. Washington, D.C., February 1972, from the series Southern Roads/City Pavements. Roland L. Freeman, photographer, Smithsonian Art Museum.

Roland L. Freeman (b. Baltimore, Maryland, 1948) is an American photographer who focuses on the lives of rural and urban African Americans. His work comprises a social history, beginning with the era of the civil rights movement.

Photo: Mule train leaves for Washington, Poor People’s March, Marks, MS, May 1968 © Ernest C. Withers, Courtesy Panopticon Gallery, Boston, MA

Ernest Withers (August 7, 1922 – October 15, 2007) was an African American freelance photographer famous for his black and white images of the segregated South in the 1950s and 1960s, Negro league baseball, and the Memphis blues scene.

Withers’ coverage of the Emmett Till murder trial brought national attention to the racial violence taking place during the 1950s in Mississippi, among other places. He traveled with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during his public life and was in Dr. King’s room in the Lorraine Hotel on the night he was assassinated.  

During his lifetime, Withers earned the nickname “The Original Civil Rights Photographer.” He risked his own safety to capture images of the era; he was beaten, shot at and harassed. After his death, however, an investigation by the Memphis Commercial Appeal newspaper revealed that Withers also worked as a F.B.I. informant and was paid for information about many of the Movement’s activities and leaders, including Dr. King.

Photo: Bereaved celebrities Nancy Wilson, Eartha Kitt, Sammy Davis Jr., Sidney Poitier, Motown founder Berry Gordy Jr. and actor Marlon Brando proceed to Dr. King’s funeral., Moneta Sleet Jr., Ebony Collection. April 1968.

Moneta Sleet, Jr. (February 14, 1926 - September 30, 1996) is best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph entitled “Deep Sorrow”. He captured the photograph of a tearful Coretta Scott King cradling her daughter Bernice at the funeral of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Sleet was the first and only black man working for a black publication (Ebony magazine) to win a Pulitzer Prize.

Sleet joined the staff of Ebony in 1955 and spent 41 years there, capturing photos of ordinary people and superstars. He covered Dr. King’s Nobel Prize Ceremony acceptance in 1964. He was in Africa in the 1950s photographing the independence of several African nations. He documented the Civil Rights Movement.

Of his photography, Sleet said, ”You’ve got to know when to intrude and when not to intrude and when to pull back. You have to be very patient, a thing that’s good for me because I have a lot of patience and don’t mind waiting -the thing is to get the editors to wait.”