There have been countless fascinating features highlighting photographers: Martin Parr. Maybe the documentary format particularly shines when displaying exceptionally powerful photographs. Today arrives one more exceptional example, directed by writer-director Yemi Bamiro, exploring the remarkable life's work of Kwame Brathwaite—a photographer, musician and African American activist who exemplified a special cultural-activist vision.
Together with his sibling Elombe, he pioneered the phrase “Black Is Beautiful” during the 1960s by capturing the African American women in New York: youthful African American women who became the transformative archetype for aesthetics, rejecting typical grooming practices and the established Caucasian standard of female beauty.
The Influence of Three Words
Black Is Beautiful became a transformative rallying cry, an inspired three-word declaration for progress. Merely declaring that African Americans radiated beauty emerged as a empowering force in culture, social movements and creative expression. Brathwaite emerged as integral to the civil rights global Black movement by photographing the legendary boxer before his historic Zaire bout in the seventies.
He served as the primary visual documentarian for the musical group's international performances, and later assumed the role of the resident artist for the legendary Harlem venue, building an extraordinary archive of African American artists. Alongside his sibling, he emerged as the central figure behind bringing Nelson Mandela to address the public in the community.
Historical Recognition
Brathwaite's son Kwame Jr shares the their quest to secure appropriate credit for his parent's achievements after he was painfully ignored in Washington DC's Smithsonian institution, opened by the former president in this century.
The film also recounts the profoundly sorrowful origin of the photographer's dedication to photography: the horrendous images of the lynching martyr, the adolescent African American lynching victim whose grieving mother defiantly insisted on an uncovered casket so the horrific reality of racial hatred might not be concealed.
From Tragedy to Beauty
From this image of horror, the visionary found a kind of transformative realization that guided him toward photographs of community. His images powerfully conveyed celebratory strength and frequently nuanced in approach: he developed a new iconography of pride through which political movements could gather.
The documentary stands as an exhilarating testament of cultural impact that persists in empower decades later.
