Photographer Kwame Brathwaite has died at the age of 85, his son Kwame Samori Brathwaite Jr. announced on social media yesterday, April 2. Brathwaite, who was largely inspired by the teachings and writings of Marcus Garvey and Carlos Cooks, held a 60-year photography career that popularized the “Black is Beautiful” movement in the 1960s and continued to empower African and African-American cultural expression and achievements throughout his lifetime.
Brathwaite was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Barbadian immigrants Cecil and Margaret Etelka Brathwaite on January 1, 1938. A middle child, Brathwaite and his brothers Elombe and John Edward grew up in South Bronx where he was admitted to the School of Industrial Art (now called the High School of Art and Design) during the early ’50s. Brathwaite had considered a career in graphic design until 1955 when he came across photos in Jet Magazine of 14-year-old Emmett Till lying mutilated in his casket after he was murdered by White civilians in Drew, Mississippi that year. The sight of this brutal murder, publicized to the entire nation with mother Mamie Till’s permission and encouragement, ignited something within Brathwaite, who understood the power of photography and exposure in the quest to recalibrate public understanding of Blackness.
One year later, Brathwaite and his older brother Elombe turned to art and activism by co-founding the African Jazz Art Society and Studios (AJASS) to serve as a cultural hub for music, fashion, and performing arts as a means of reintegrating the jazz scene back uptown from where it strayed. As AJASS began organizing shows across Harlem and the Bronx, Brathwaite observed a man taking photos at one of the events and decided to try it out for himself, saying that he just “fell in love with the textures,” specifically the “slight graininess to it.”…
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