Being at the Whitney is a great thing Bridgeport photographer Adger Cowans says
Joel Lang
FacebookTwitterEmail Momma s Ohio Piano by Adger Cowans.Courtesy of Adger Cowans and Virginia Museum of Fine Arts / Contributed photo
A new exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art celebrates a group of 14 mostly amateur photographers who in the early 1960s in Harlem founded what came to be called the Kamoinge Collective, determined to remake the image of Black America.
Unique among them is Bridgeport’s own Adger Cowans. Then the group’s lone professional with art school training, Cowans has lived in the Read’s Artspace Building since 2006 and at age 84 remains very active.
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.