We have witnessed many fascinating features about visual artists: Martin Parr. Maybe the film medium truly excels when presenting exceptionally powerful still images. Now arrives another outstanding case, by creator Yemi Bamiro, chronicling the remarkable life's work of Kwame Brathwaite—a photographer, artist and social justice champion who represented a unique artistic-political perspective.
Alongside his family member Elombe, he virtually invented the expression “Black Is Beautiful” in the sixties by photographing the Harlem models in the cultural epicenter: emerging Black women who became the transformative standard for visual appeal, rejecting typical grooming practices and the established white standard of female beauty.
The Influence of a Simple Phrase
This powerful statement became a powerful unifying message, an inspired concise manifesto for change. Merely to assert that people of color possessed beauty emerged as a empowering power in art, activism and culture. The artist grew into a key figure in the civil rights African diaspora struggle by photographing Muhammad Ali leading up to his iconic Rumble in the Jungle in 1974.
He served as the official photographer for the band's continental journey, and subsequently was named the house photographer for the historic Apollo theatre, assembling an amazing archive of musical pioneers. Together with his brother, he became the key organizer behind bringing the South African leader to speak in Harlem.
Personal Journey
Brathwaite's son Kwame Jr is interviewed the their mission to secure due acknowledgment for his family heritage after he was hurtfully overlooked in the nation's capital's Smithsonian institution, established by the former president in 2016.
The film further reveals the inexpressibly painful genesis of the photographer's dedication to image making: the horrendous photographs of the lynching martyr, the teenage civil rights murder victim whose grieving mother courageously requested an public viewing so the brutal truth of bigoted brutality would not be covered up.
Through Darkness to Empowerment
In this image of violence, the visionary found a type of anti-epiphany that guided him toward photographs of beauty. His work beautifully expressed celebratory strength and often not overtly political: he established a fresh visual language of strength through which social causes could mobilize.
This represents an inspiring testament of cultural impact that still inspire decades later.
