Research Guides: Researching African American Photographers: Books and Articles

Books and Articles

A Beautiful Ghetto by Devin Allen; D. Watkins (Introduction by); Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (Introduction by)
ISBN: 1608467597
Publication Date: 2017-09-12
On April 18, 2015, the city of Baltimore erupted in mass protests in response to the brutal murder of Freddie Gray by police. Devin Allen was there, and his iconic photos of the Baltimore uprising became a viral sensation. In these stunning photographs, Allen documents the uprising as he strives to capture the life of his city and the people who live there.
The Black Trans-Atlantic Experience by Stephen Marc; Marilyn Houlberg (Foreword by)
ISBN: 0252019555
Publication Date: 1992-11-01
Carrie Mae Weems: Kitchen Table Series by Carrie Weems (By (photographer)); Sarah Lewis (Text by); Adrienne Edwards (Text by)
ISBN: 8862084625
Publication Date: 2016-04-26
Kitchen Table Series is the first publication dedicated solely to this early and important body of work by the American artist Carrie Mae Weems. The 20 photographs and 14 text panels that make up Kitchen Table Series tell a story of one woman's life, as conducted in the intimate setting of her kitchen. Kitchen Table Series seeks to reposition and reimagine the possibility of women and the possibility of people of color, and has to do with, in the artist's words, "unrequited love."
Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video by Kathryn E. Delmez (Editor); Henry Louis Gates (Contribution by); Franklin Sirmans (Contribution by); Robert Storr (Contribution by); Deborah Willis (Contribution by)
ISBN: 0300176899
Publication Date: 2012-10-30
The work of contemporary artist Carrie Mae Weems (b. 1953) hits hard with a powerful mix of lived life and social commentary. This book, the first major survey of Weems's career, traces the artist's commitment to addressing issues of social justice through her artwork.
Dawoud Bey: Seeing Deeply by Dawoud Bey
ISBN: 1477317198
Publication Date: 2018-09-18
Recipient of a 2017 MacArthur Foundation "genius grant," Dawoud Bey has created a body of photography that masterfully portrays the contemporary American experience on its own terms and in all of its diversity. Dawoud Bey: Seeing Deeply offers a forty-year retrospective of the celebrated photographer's work, from his early street photography in Harlem to his current images of Harlem gentrification.
Dawoud Bey: The Chicago Project by Dawoud Bey; Dan Collison; Elizabeth Meister; Stephanie Smith; Jacqueline Terrassa
ISBN: 0935573380
Publication Date: 2003-10-01
Is it possible for a photographic portrait to reveal anything "real" about its subject? As part of a twelve-week residency at the University of Chicago's Smart Museum of Art, acclaimed photographer Dawoud Bey asked this question of twelve teenagers from nearby schools.
Eighteen Photographs by James Van Der Zee
Call Number: TR647.V33 J33
Publication Date: 1974
Folkroots : Images of Mississippi Black Folklife (1974-1976) by Roland Freeman
Call Number: F345 .F74
Gettysburg : a Journey in Time by William Earle Williams
ISBN: 0918030056
Publication Date: 1997
Gordon Parks: a Harlem Family by Gordon Parks (By (photographer))
ISBN: 3869306025
Publication Date: 2013-01-15
Gordon Parks: A Harlem Family 1967 honours the legacy and the work of late iconic artist and photojournalist Gordon Parks, who would have turned 100 on November 30, 2012. The exhibition catalogue is co-published by The Studio Museum in Harlem and The Gordon Parks Foundation and features approximately eighty black and white photographs of the Fontenelle family, whose lives Gordon Parks documented as part of a 1968 Life magazine photo essay.
Gordon Parks: Segregation Story by Gordon Parks (By (photographer))
ISBN: 386930801X
Publication Date: 2015-02-28
In September 1956 Life published a photo-essay by Gordon Parks entitled "The Restraints: Open and Hidden" which documented the everyday activities and rituals of one extended African American family living in the rural South under Jim Crow segregation. One of the most powerful photographs depicts Joanne Thornton Wilson and her niece, Shirley Anne Kirksey standing in front of a theater in Mobile, Alabama, an image which became a forceful "weapon of choice," as Parks would say, in the struggle against racism and segregation.
Harlem Heyday : the Photography of James VanDerZee : Portraits of the Harlem Community During the 1920s and 1930s : the Studio Museum in Harlem, June 20-September 1, 1982; New York State Museum, October 16-January 9, 1983. by James Van Der Zee
Call Number: F128.68.H3 V36 1982
The Historic Photographs of Addison N. Scurlock : June 19-August 29, 1976, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. by Addison Scurlock
Call Number: E185.96 .S423
Publication Date: 1976
Kwame Brathwaite: Black Is Beautiful by Kwame Brathwaite (Photographer); Tanisha C. Ford (Text by); Deborah Willis (Text by)
ISBN: 159711443X
Publication Date: 2019-05-01
"From Beyoncé to Barack Obama, it's hard to think of a black figure who does not owe their prominence, in some measure, to the ethos of 'Black is Beautiful'" --Ekow Eshun, Financial Times In the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, Kwame Brathwaite used his photography to popularize the political slogan "Black Is Beautiful." This monograph--the first ever dedicated to Brathwaite's remarkable career--tells the story of a key, but under-recognized, figure of the second Harlem Renaissance.
LaToya Ruby Frazier: and from the Coaltips a Tree Will Rise by Jean-Marc Prévost (Text by); Denis Gielen (Text by); Joanna Leroy (Text by); LaToya Ruby Frazier (By (photographer))
ISBN: 2930368705
Publication Date: 2017-11-21
Photographer LaToya Ruby Frazier (born 1982) grew up in Braddock, PA, a borough in the American Rust Belt ravaged by the steel-industry crisis that hit the US during the Reagan administration. In this former bastion of the steel industry, the artist was raised in her Afro-American family, whose story she told in The Notion of Family. Testimonies gathered by Frazier from the former miners and their families have resulted in and from the Coaltips a Tree Will Rise, an extensive collection of portraits, landscapes and still lifes.
Lorna Simpson by Okwui Enwezor; Helaine Posner
ISBN: 0810955482
Publication Date: 2006-05-01
One of the leading African-American artists of her generation, Lorna Simpson first became well known in the mid-1980s with large-scale photographs examining racial and gender identity. The shadowy, foreboding atmosphere of these works suggests still images from film noir subjects, and they depict urban locales.
Lorna Simpson by Deborah Willis; Michael Read (Editor)
ISBN: 0933286600
Publication Date: 1993-02-01
Party Photographs by William Earle Williams
Call Number: TR647 .W54 1985
Publication Date: 1985
Passage on the Underground Railroad by Stephen Marc
ISBN: 160473129X
Publication Date: 2009-10-09
For seven years Stephen Marc photographed the routes traveled by fugitive slaves in their search for freedom, documenting and interpreting his research along the way. Marc uses two types of photographic composites to reveal the history of the Underground Railroad (UGRR): multiple photographs that describe UGRR sites and metaphorical montages that address the larger horror of slavery.
Roland L. Freeman, a Baltimore portfolio, 1968-1979 : a Black Photographer looks at his Hometown by Roland Freeman
Call Number: F189.B1 F74
Roy DeCarava, photographer. by Roy DeCarava
Call Number: TR647.D43 N4
Publication Date: 1970
Roy DeCarava : February 14-May 9, 1976, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. by Roy DeCarava
Call Number: TR647 .D43 1976
Publication Date: 1976
A Stirring Song Sung Heroic: African Americans from Slavery to Freedom, 1619 to 1865 by William Earle Williams (Artist); Alan Trachtenberg (Contribution by); John T. Hill (Designed by); Matthew Seamus Callinan (Compiled by)
ISBN: 097891998X
Publication Date: 2013-09-06
Catalog for A Stirring Song Sung Heroic, an exhibition by photographer William Earle Williams, Audrey A. and John L. Dusseau Professor in Humanities, Professor of Fine Arts, and Curator of Photography at Haverford College. The history of American slavery is presented across three series of black and white silver gelatin prints.
Urban Notions by Stephen Marc
Call Number: TR654 .M338 1983
ISBN: 0915109018
Publication Date: 1983-01-01
VanDerZee by Deborah Willis-Thomas; Rodger C. Birt (Contribution by)
ISBN: 0810939231
Publication Date: 1993-10-01
James VanDerZee was one of the great American photographers of the 20th century and the leading African-American photographer of his day. This survey of his work includes his late portraits, as well as many of his best-known photographs and some new discoveries.

America's Own Monsters by Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe
ISBN: 0396086098
Publication Date: 1986-01-01
Black Artists in Photography, 1840-1940 by George E. Sullivan
ISBN: 0525652086
Publication Date: 1996-09-01
Surveys the work of African-American professional photographers from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century: Jules Lion, Augustus Washington, James P. Ball, the Goodridge Brothers, Cornelius M. Battey, and Addison Scurlock.
Black Boston by Kim Sichel; Edmund B. Gaither
ISBN: 1881450031
Publication Date: 1994-06-29
Black Photographers, 1840-1940 by WILLIS-THOMAS
ISBN: 0824091477
Publication Date: 1984-11-01
First published in 1984. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Black Photographers, 1940-1980 by WILLIS-THOMAS
ISBN: 082408389X
Publication Date: 1989-03-01
"A visual testimony of the black community through the photographer as witness, documenter, artist and recorder"--Back cover
Black Photographers Annual
Call Number: TR640 .B53 / 1976
Publication Date: 1973-
Century of Black Photographers, 1840-1960 by Valencia Coar; Michael Winston; Angela Y. Davis; Deborah G. Johnson
ISBN: 0911517006
Publication Date: 1983-03-01
Committed to the Image by Barbara Head Millstein (Editor); Brooklyn Museum Staff (Contribution by)
ISBN: 0872731448
Publication Date: 2001-01-01
Represents a far-ranging exploration of contemporary African American identity.
Constructed Images: New Photography by Deborah Willis
Publication Date: 1991
Contemporary Afro-American Photography by William Olander; P. Debavpatnaik
ISBN: 0942946030
Publication Date: 1983-10-01
Enterprising Images by John Vincent Jezierski
ISBN: 0814324517
Publication Date: 2000-06-01
In Enterprising Images, John Vincent Jezierski tells the story of one of America's first families of photography, documenting the history of the Goodridge studio for three-quarters of a century. Weaving photographic and regional history with the narrative of a family whose lives paralleled the social and political happenings of the country, Jezierski provides the reader with a complex family biography for those interested in regional and African American, as well as photographic, history.
The Harlem Book of the Dead by James Van Der Zee; Owen Dodson; Camille Billops
ISBN: 0871001527
Publication Date: 1978-01-01
Hidden Treasures: African American Photographers in Atlanta, 1870-1970 by Herman Mason Jr.
Publication Date: 1991
Images of Blacks in American Culture by Jessie Carney Smith
ISBN: 0313248443
Publication Date: 1988-06-28
This reference work explores these images, both positive and negative, and their historical development and impact on both black and American culture. . . . Its unique qualities are the discussions and sources for studying and understanding those artifacts as well as the provision of a historical perspective on the images. This comprehensive work enriches and extends the subject matter and the scope of the leading books on the topic, and provides a ready reference for information published in scattered sources.
In-Sight by Okwui Enwezor; Octavio Zaya; Olu Oguibe; Clare Bell
ISBN: 0810968959
Publication Date: 1996-09-01
Presenting the work of 30 diverse photographers from throughout Africa since 1940, this is the complete catalogue of an exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
Reflections in Black by Deborah Willis; Robin D. G. Kelley (Introduction by)
ISBN: 0393048802
Publication Date: 2000-06-17
Reflections in Black, the first comprehensive history of black photographers, is Deborah Willis's long-awaited, groundbreaking assemblage of photographs of African American life from 1840 to the present. Willis, a curator of photography at the Smithsonian Institution, has selected nearly 600 stunning images that give us rich, hugely moving glimpses of black life, from slavery to the Great Migrations, from rare antebellum portraits to 1990s middle-class families.
Songs of My People by Eric Easter (Editor); Dudley Brooks; D. Michael Cheers
ISBN: 0316109665
Publication Date: 1992-02-01
A historic photo documentary of the world of African Americans, this is a self-portrait seen through the eyes and lenses of a rare assemblage of some of the nation's best black photojournalists.
Special Moments in African-American History, 1955-1996 by Doris E. Saunders (Compiled by, Editor); Gordon Parks (Introduction by); Lerone Bennett (Afterword by); Raymond A. Thomas (Designed by); Moneta Sleet
ISBN: 0874850878
Publication Date: 1998-11-01
The photographs of Moneta Sleet Jr. are internationally acclaimed collector’s items encapsulating special moments in the history of African Americans around the world in the latter half of the 20th century. Now, for the first time, these works that have been coveted by many are presented in one remarkable book. Many of these rare photographs have never been seen before.
Visual Griots, Works by Four African American Photographers by Tom Beck
Call Number: TR644.v57 1996
Publication Date: 1996