Working Together
Saturday 21 November 2020 - Sunday 28 March 2021 - Event ended.
Working Together is an unprecedented exhibition that chronicles the formative years of the Kamoinge Workshop, a collective of Black photographers established in New York City in 1963. “Kamoinge” comes from the language of the Kikuyu people of Kenya, meaning “a group of people acting together,” and reflects the ideal that animated the collective. In the early years, at a time of dramatic social upheaval, members met regularly to show and discuss each other’s work and to share their critical perspectives, technical and professional experience, and friendship. Although each artist had his or her own sensibility and developed an independent career, the members of Kamoinge were deeply committed to photography s power and status as an independent art form. They boldly and inventively depicted their communities as they saw and participated in them, rather than as they were often portrayed.
âTake Beautiful Pictures of Our Peopleâ
Born in 1960s Harlem, the Kamoinge collective was influential in Black photography but ignored by the mainstream until recently. This exhibition should change that.
Anthony Barboza photographed “Kamoinge Members” in 1973. Back row, from left: Albert R. Fennar, Ray Francis, Herbert Randall, C. Daniel Dawson, Beuford Smith, Herb Robinson, Adger Cowans and Anthony Barboza. Front row, from left: Herman Howard, Ming Smith, James Mannas Jr., Louis Draper, Calvin Wilson and Shawn Walker.Credit.Anthony Barboza and Whitney Museum of American Art
By Siddhartha Mitter
Published Dec. 22, 2020Updated Dec. 23, 2020
Shawn Walker was up on 125th Street with Louis Draper and Ray Francis, hanging out and taking pictures. It was the summer of 1964 and the friends, in their 20s, were members of a fledgling photography collective in Harlem called the Kamoinge Workshop. Thatâs when the celebrated photographer Roy DeCarava walked up. The works
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In the 1960s, a group of Black photographers from New York City began gathering in kitchens, living rooms, and galleries to critique each other s work. According to one of the workshop’s founders and its current president, Adger Cowans, they basically began as “bull sessions” where photographers would talk shop.
“Sitting around, you know, eating chili and drinking wine, and talking about cameras and how to shoot,” Cowans said.
Now their work is the subject of a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, but for some, it s a bittersweet moment for some of the featured artists.