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Kwame Brathwaite, the pioneering activist and photographer whose work helped define the aesthetics of the “Black is Beautiful” movement of the 1960s and beyond, passed away on April 1 at the age of 85.
His son, Kwame Brathwaite, Jr, shared the sad news of his father’s transition in an Instagram post, describing him as the patriarch of their family, their rock, and a hero.
In recent years, curators, historians, and collectors have shown renewed interest in Brathwaite’s work. His first major institutional retrospective, organized by the Aperture Foundation, debuted in 2019 at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles and has since been touring the country.
Brathwaite was born in 1938 to Barbadian immigrants in New York, and he referred to his birthplace as “the People’s Republic of Brooklyn.” As a child, his family moved to Harlem and then to the South Bronx when he was five years old. Brathwaite attended the School of Industrial Art and developed an interest in photography after being inspired by two significant moments. The first was in 1955 when he saw David Jackson’s photograph of Emmett Till’s open casket. The second was in 1956 when he witnessed a young man taking photos in a dark jazz club without a flash, sparking his own creative possibilities.
Using a Hasselblad medium-format camera, Brathwaite mastered working with limited light, which added depth and enhanced the storytelling in his images. He also developed a darkroom technique that brought out the beauty of Black skin in his photographs, perfecting it in his Harlem apartment. Brathwaite photographed iconic jazz musicians of the 1950s and ’60s, including Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Thelonious Monk, capturing the mood and essence of their performances.
In the early 1960s, Brathwaite and AJASS, the organization he co-founded, used photography and organization skills to challenge Eurocentric beauty standards. They created the Grandassa Models, a group of young Black women who Brathwaite photographed, celebrating and emphasizing their natural features. In 1962, AJASS organized “Naturally ’62,” a fashion show held at the Purple Manor in Harlem featuring these models. The show became a regular event until 1992. Brathwaite met his wife, Sikolo, a Grandassa Model, during this time. They got married in 1966, and their union lasted until Brathwaite’s passing.
During the 1970s, Brathwaite shifted his focus to document other forms of popular Black music. He accompanied the Jackson Five on their African tour in 1974 and captured the historic “Rumble in the Jungle” boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in 1974. His commissions also included photographing Nina Simone, Stevie Wonder, Sly and the Family Stone, Bob Marley, and other music legends.
Throughout the following decades, Brathwaite continued to develop his unique photographic style, always embodying the ethos of “Black is Beautiful.” In 2016, he joined the esteemed roster of the Philip Martin Gallery in Los Angeles and worked on commissions as recently as 2018 when he photographed artist and stylist Joanne Petit-Frère for The New Yorker.
Unfortunately, due to declining health, Brathwaite was unable to be interviewed for T Magazine’s 2021 profile commemorating his retrospective at the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas. However, his legacy lives on, with the Art Institute of Chicago currently hosting the exhibition “Kwame Brathwaite: Things Well Worth Waiting For” until July 24.
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Kwame Brathwaite’s contribution to the world of photography and activism will forever be remembered, inspiring future generations to embrace the beauty and power of Black culture.