John Edwin Mason: Documentary, Motorsports, Photo History

Priya Ramrakha: Photographer, Pan-Africanist

One of the most significant photography exhibitions of the year -- Priya Ramrakha: A Pan-African Perspective, 1950-1968 -- opens on Thursday, October 5th, at the FADA Gallery, in Johannesburg, South Africa. It will add immensely to our understanding of African photography. The exhibition draws on his recently rediscovered archive and brings the work of this pioneering African photojournalist to the public for the first time since his death in 1968. Read more →

PS To the Black Photographers Annual at the Virginia Museum Fine Arts

The Black Photographers Annual is now freely available online. This is a very big deal for anyone who cares about photography and American cultural history -- and for anyone who teaches the subjects. Forty-five years after the first volume of the annual appeared, copies are very hard to find. As part of the exhibition, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has digitized the annuals, and they're now freely available to anyone with an internet connection Read more →

The Black Photographers Annual at the Virginia Museum Fine Arts

We'll probably look back on 2017 and say that A Commitment to the Community, an exhibition at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts that celebrates the Black Photographers Annual of the 1970s and '80s, was the most important photographic exhibition of the year. Read more →

LaToya Ruby Fazier: A MacArthur "Genius" Award and a Thank-You to Gordon Parks

I've never met a genius. I've spent the last 25 years teaching in major research universities. Before that I went to an awfully good grad school, and I'd still be hard pressed to say that I've met anyone that I'd call a genius -- somebody, that is, with the dazzling,... Read more →

Cedric Nunn at the University of Virginia, 16 and 17 September 2015

Acclaimed South African photographer Cedric Nunn will visit the University of Virginia on September 16th and 17th, and I couldn't be happier. Cedric is both an artist whose work I've admired for many years and a friend. I can't wait to hear him speak and to introduce him to my... Read more →

Updates (Finally!): Margaret Bourke-White, Gordon Parks, Kamoinge, & En Foco

It's been a long time -- too long a time -- since I updated this blog. And I'm pretty sure that my regular readers (all three or four of them) have departed for more entertaining pastures. To them I say, please come back. Why have I been so silent? In... Read more →

"Wow, Quel Babes!": Gordon Parks & American Teens in Paris, 1952

Gordon Parks was a serious man. His claim to fame as a photographer rests on the searing photo-essays that he produced for Life magazine on issues such as poverty and racial justice. But he had a lighter side, and he revealed it, from time to time, to Life's readers. Today... Read more →