Benjamin Wigfall

Search for art, find what you are looking for in the museum and much more.
"Thus it is valid to state that the Kamoinge Workshop, while operating within an arena of negation, was primarily forged in an atmosphere of hope and not despair."
—Louis Draper
Welcome to an online presentation of the exhibition Working Together which opened February 2020. More information about the exhibition can be found on the exhibition page. Featured videos include a virtual tour of the exhibition in situ.
Working Together features more than 150 photographs by Richmond-born artist Louis Draper and other members of the Kamoinge Workshop, a photography collective he helped found in 1963. The exhibition includes valuable documents and publications related to the formation of the collective and explores the impact of this remarkable group of African American artists on the history of photography in the latter part of the twentieth century.
In 1963 a group of African American photographers based in New York came together to form the Kamoinge Workshop. Working Together focuses on its first two decades and features the work of fifteen members who joined between 1963 and 1972. They include Anthony Barboza, Adger Cowans, Daniel Dawson, Roy DeCarava, Al Fennar, Ray Francis, Herman Howard, Jimmie Mannas, Herb Randall, Herb Robinson, Beuford Smith, Ming Smith, Shawn Walker, and Calvin Wilson, as well as Louis Draper, a Richmond native, whose archive inspired the exhibition.
The members chose the group’s name, Kamoinge, because it means “a group of people acting and working together” in Gikuyu, the language of the Kikuyu people of Kenya. In the early years, it operated as a formal group that voted on membership and recorded attendance, yet when asked what Kamoinge means to them now, nearly every member from this early period answers with a variation on “family.” While the artists maintained independent photography careers, they met weekly, usually on Sundays, to show each other their work and engage in a lively exchange of ideas. During that time, they organized exhibitions, produced portfolios, and mentored youth.
No exhibition can fully recreate the complexity of such a large and interconnected group; however, Working Together highlights some of the visual dialogues among the members’ photographs, while utilizing archival material to trace the group’s significant exhibitions and publications.
Kamoinge helped to shape a critical era of Black self-determination in the 1960s and 1970s, a period that coincided with a pivotal shift in photography’s wider acceptance as a powerful artistic medium.
In the summer of 1964, some of the Kamoinge members who lived in Harlem documented the aftermath of the July riots. Roy DeCarava, on assignment for Newsweek, posed Walker, Francis, and Draper for a close-up, which became the cover of the magazine’s August 3, 1964, issue headlined “Harlem: Hatred on the Streets.” In 1995, Draper recalled:
We were caught up in the riots in very strange ways. This picture (you’re seeing) is supposedly of three angry revolutionaries. Harlem was so dangerous at the time that most of the photographers who would normally do this, mainly the white photographers, didn’t want to come up to make photographs of what was going on. Reluctantly Newsweek hired Roy DeCarava. They needed a cover. Roy knew that we would do it for him. He asked us to sit and look angry for him. We were having a ball. It was a hot, muggy day and we were kidding around until the white art director chided. “You boys don’t look angry enough.” We got pissed and Roy got his picture.
In 1971, Essence magazine sent Draper on assignment to Mississippi to photograph civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer. Known for fearlessness and strength in the midst of violence and intimidation, Hamer had been arrested and severely beaten by police in 1963 for her work on voter registration drives. She gained national attention when she returned to her activism in the mid-1960s, and this portrait visually distills her voice. To see the entire article, click on the Essence magazine cover below.
Although the Kamoinge Workshop’s membership remained static for over twenty years, it engaged a broader community of Black photographers throughout its history. The Black Photographers Annual and the International Black Photographers both illustrate the ways in which Kamoinge honored the generation of photographers who preceded them and encouraged the younger group of photographers emerging around them.
After major exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1972 and the International Center for Photography in 1975, they did not organize Kamoinge Workshop exhibitions or produce publications again until the mid-1990s. The group never disbanded, and the members maintained close, supportive relationships throughout these years. They resumed formal meetings again in 1992, applied for nonprofit status, and renamed themselves Kamoinge, Inc. The influx of more members brought new energy and renewed discussion about the group’s purpose and direction, signaling a different era for its identity. Kamoinge, Inc. carries on the legacy of the Kamoinge Workshop and currently has more than thirty members who continue to meet regularly and organize exhibitions, among other projects.
Visit the Kamoinge WebsiteFounded by Beuford Smith and published by Joe Crawford, the first volume of The Black Photographers Annual came out in 1973, followed by three more volumes in 1974, 1976, and 1980. The majority of the picture editors for the Annual were Kamoinge members; however, the 118 artists featured throughout its four volumes far exceeded the boundaries of the collective. The idea for the project had emerged from a decade of conversations within Kamoinge about expanding opportunities for African American photographers.
In these five photographs, Barboza documented Joe Crawford, Beuford Smith, Louis Draper, Ray Francis, Shawn Walker, and Vance Allen as they put together the first volume.
The editors invited author Toni Morrison, already well known for her first novel, The Bluest Eye, to write a brief forward, where she succinctly outlined the new publication’s purpose:
It was conceived as a commitment to the community of Black artists, executed as a glorious display of their craft and their perception. . . . There is no higher praise for any project than that it is rare, true, and free. And isn’t that what art is all about? And isn’t that what we are all about?
Read more about the Black Photographers AnnualOpening Reception for Working Together: Louis Draper and the Kamoinge Workshop, January 29, 2020
Top row, left to Right: James Mannas, Herb Robinson, C. Daniel Dawson, Beuford Smith
Bottom row, left to right: Herb Randall, Shawn Walker, Anthony Barboza, Adger Cowans
Photograph by David Stover, © VMFA
Exhibition Catalogue
Working Together: Louis Draper and the Kamoinge Workshop
By Sarah L. Eckhardt
Preface by Deborah Willis, with additional essays by Erina Duganne, Romi Crawford, John Edwin Mason, and Bill Gaskins
Other Books
Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present
By Deborah Willis
The Self in Black and White: Race and Subjectivity in Postwar American Photography
By Erina Duganne
The Sweet Breath of Life
By Ntozake Shange, Frank Stewart, and Kamoinge, Inc.
The Black Woman: Power and Grace
By Kamoinge, Inc.
Timeless
Edited by Anthony Barboza and Herb Robinson
Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power
Edited by Mark Godfrey and Zoé Whitley