There have been countless compelling features focusing on photographers: Martin Parr. It could be the documentary format naturally comes alive when displaying particularly vivid still images. Now arrives a new outstanding case, by filmmaker Yemi Bamiro, chronicling the impressive life's work of Kwame Brathwaite—an artist, musician and social justice champion who represented a special artistic-political vision.
Together with his brother Elombe, he virtually invented the expression “Black Is Beautiful” during the 1960s by documenting the Harlem models in Harlem: youthful women of color who transformed into the transformative standard for beauty, rejecting traditional beauty standards and the established Eurocentric standard of female beauty.
The Power of a Revolutionary Slogan
Black Is Beautiful became a powerful call to action, an visionary concise manifesto for change. Just to assert that people of color were beautiful emerged as a liberating force in society, activism and culture. Brathwaite grew into integral to the civil rights pan-Africanist struggle by documenting Muhammad Ali before his historic Rumble in the Jungle in 1974.
He became the official photographer for the musical group's international performances, and eventually assumed the role of the resident artist for the historic Harlem venue, creating an extraordinary collection of black musicians. Together with his brother, he emerged as the key organizer behind bringing the anti-apartheid icon to appear in New York.
Personal Journey
The photographer's offspring Kwame Jr shares the family's mission to achieve proper recognition for his family heritage after he was hurtfully excluded in the nation's capital's Smithsonian institution, inaugurated by the political leader in recent years.
The film also recounts the deeply tragic inspiration of Brathwaite's dedication to visual storytelling: the horrendous images of the lynching martyr, the teenage civil rights tragic figure whose mourning family member courageously requested an public viewing so the brutal truth of bigoted brutality would not be hidden.
Through Darkness to Hope
Through this vision of tragedy, the visionary found a form of transformative realization that led him toward visual representations of beauty. His photographs powerfully conveyed empowering beauty and often nuanced in approach: he curated a new iconography of pride upon which social causes could unite.
This represents an exhilarating testament of artistic vision that still inspire through the years.
