Books

This book honors the life, death and legacy of Emmett Till through a kaleidoscope of 20th- and 21st-century photography. Both a reckoning with the past and a probing investigation into the current state of American life, If Emmett Till Livedpresents a fictionalized narrative of the life Emmett Till might have lived had he returned home in 1955, rather than being murdered at the age of 14 while visiting family in Mississippi, a victim of the racial terror of Jim Crow rule. Curated by writer and scholar Sarah Lewis, the more than 100 photographs from dozens of artists are drawn from the permanent collection of the Museum of Contemporary Photography. Her selection of works recalls small but not insignificant moments in Till’s childhood as well as larger themes from his life’s unfulfilled promise. Collectively, Lewis’ selections present a poetic and profound photographic account of quotidian moments from a childhood and adulthood unrealized. These photographs speak to the absence of images of Till’s life beyond the age of 14. In filling that void, the exhibition more broadly addresses the lasting impact of racialized violence in the United States across generations, ultimately offering a framework for considering how freedom is secured on American ground.

This important book showcases the potent role of visual art in African American history and culture. Featuring Black artists working in a range of media, from photography to sculpture to painting—including Amy Sherald, Benny Andrews, Sheila Pree Bright, Bisa Butler, Charles Alston, Elizabeth Catlett, Shaun Leonardo, and David Hammons, to name just a few—the book considers art that exemplifies resilience in times of conflict, as well as the ritual of creation, and the defiant pleasure of healing.

Reckoning, based on the exhibition of the same name at the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), explores the ongoing struggles Black Americans have faced in their pursuit to enjoy the fundamental rights and freedoms promised in the Constitution to citizens of the United States. Drawn from the museum’s permanent collection, the featured works respond to the dual crises of Covid-19 and systemic racism that shaped 2020, a period that has been called one of reckoning, as the world witnessed the killing of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other African Americans, leading to some of the largest protests in US history.

From photography’s beginnings in the United States, Black studio photographers operated on the developing edge of popular media to produce affirming portraits for their clients, as well as a wide range of photographic work rooted in their communities. Called to the Camera offers a comprehensive history of this work, from the nineteenth-century daguerreotypes of James Presley Ball to the height of Black studios in the mid-twentieth century, and considers contemporary photographers responding to Black studio traditions today. In addition to showcasing famous photographers such as Ball, James Van Der Zee, and Addison Scurlock, this volume brings attention to dozens of other artists across the country, including Florestine Perrault Collins, Austin Hansen, and Henry Clay Anderson. The book features more than one hundred extraordinary vintage photographs, many of them unique objects and some, like those by the Hooks Brothers Studio, published here for the first time. Highlighting Black subjects on both sides of the camera, Called to the Camera presents a broader and more inclusive history of photography.

Collaboration is a groundbreaking publication, by five great thinkers and practitioners in photography, in collaboration with hundreds of photographers, writers, critics, artists, and academics. This collection uses the lens of collaboration to challenge dominant narratives around photographic history and authorship. Working with an accumulation of more than six hundred photographs, each entry breaks apart photography’s “single creator” tradition by bringing to light tangible traces of collaboration—the various relationships, exchanges, and interactions that occur in the making of any photograph and in the shaping, undoing and transforming archives.

Performance Review, the first monograph by North Carolina-based artist, educator and activist Endia Beal, brings together work from first-hand experiences that highlight the realities and challenges for women of color in the corporate workplace.

The photographic industry – its exhibitions, galleries, publications and auctions – employs thousands of women, but champions mostly men. To begin to redress the balance, here is a timely presentation of the work of over 30 female photographers working today. This book is predominantly a celebration of some of the most inquisitive, intelligent and daring photography being created now. The stories the photographers tell are the most pressing social, political and personal issues seen through the female lens.

This book, All Power: Visual Legacies of the Black Panther Party, evolved from correspondence and conversation with a select list of contemporary black artists who answered the call and submitted work that was from their perspective related to the Party. They include emerging and internationally acclaimed practitioners from around the nation, women and men spanning thirty to seventy years of age.

After decades of art collecting, prominent Washington D.C.–based activist, philanthropist, and founder of the august Duke Ellington School of the Arts, Peggy Cooper Cafritz had amassed one of the most important collections of work by artists of color in the country. But in 2009, the more than three hundred works that comprised this extraordinary collection were destroyed in the largest residential fire in Washington, D.C. history. The pioneering collection included art by Kara Walker, Kerry James Marshall, Mickalene Thomas, Yinka Shonibare, Nick Cave, Kehinde Wiley, Barkley L. Hendricks, Lorna Simpson, and Carrie Mae Weems, among many others.

This beautifully illustrated volume features 200 of the works that were lost, along with works that she has collected since the fire, as well as important contributions by preeminent curators and artists.

MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora is an exclusive and commemorative publication committed to establishing and representing a collective voice of women photographers of African descent. The inaugural issue of MFON features over 100 women photographers across the Diaspora. This iconic issue includes an introduction by Dr. Deborah Willis, MacArthur Fellow and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. It also features essays written by women scholars, journalists and artists. Subsequent issues of MFON will feature photographic essays of four or five photographers with in depth interviews and essays that will contextualize the works.