James Augustus Van Der Zee was an American photographer best known for his portraits of black New Yorkers. He was a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Aside from the artistic merits of his work, Van Der Zee produced the most comprehensive documentation of the period. Among his most famous subjects during this time were Marcus Garvey, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and Countee Cullen.
Roy Rudolph DeCarava was an American artist. DeCarava received early critical acclaim for his photography, initially engaging and imaging the lives of African Americans and jazz musicians in the communities where he lived and worked. Over a career that spanned nearly six decades, DeCarava came to be known as a founder in the field of black and white fine art photography, advocating for an approach to the medium based on the core value of an individual, subjective creative sensibility, which was separate and distinct from the "social documentary" style of many predecessors.
Clemens Kalischer was an American photojournalist and art photographer. He was born in Germany and immigrated to the United States.
Coreen Simpson is a noted African-American photographer and jewelry designer, whose work has an African-American theme.
Consuelo Delesseps Kanaga was an American photographer and writer who became well known for her photographs of African-Americans.
Janette Beckman is a British documentary photographer who has worked in London, New York and Los Angeles. Beckman describes herself as a documentary photographer. While she produces a lot of work on location, she is also a studio portrait photographer. Her work has appeared on records for the major labels, and in magazines including Esquire,Rolling Stone,Glamour,Italian Vogue,The Times,Newsweek,Jalouse,Mojo and others.
Jules Allen is an American photographer, author, and educator. He is known for his photographs of African-American culture. He is an emeritus professor of Queensborough Community College of the City University of New York, where he has taught for two decades in the art and photography department.
Benedict Joseph Fernandez III was an American educator and journalistic and documentary street photographer. He is noted for photographing the protest movements of the 1960s, particularly those of the civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam War movement.
Martine Barrat is a French photographer, actress, dancer and writer.
Martin Edward Elkort was an American photographer, illustrator and writer known primarily for his street photography. Prints of his work are held and displayed by several prominent art museums in the United States. His photographs have regularly appeared in galleries and major publications. Early black and white photographs by Elkort feature the fabled Lower East Side in Manhattan, New York City, showing its ethnic diversity, myriad streets and cluttered alleys. The Coney Island amusement park in Brooklyn was another favorite site during that period. His later work depicts street scenes from downtown Los Angeles and Tijuana, Mexico. Throughout Martin Elkort's long career as a photographer, he always showed the positive, joyful side of life in his candid images.
Janet Henry is a visual artist based in New York City.
Ming Smith is an American photographer. She was the first African-American female photographer whose work was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Kwame Brathwaite was an American photojournalist and activist known for popularizing the phrase "Black is Beautiful" and documenting life and culture in Harlem and Africa.
Ka-Man Tse is a Hong Kong-born photographer, video artist, and educator based in New York. Influenced by her Asian-American and queer identity, Tse primarily uses portraiture to tell stories about the people, identity, visibility, and place in and around the queer community.
Linda Day Clark is a photographer, professor, and curator noted for capturing everyday life in African American rural and urban environments, particularly in Gee's Bend. Her work has been shown in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Lehman College, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and The Smithsonian's Anacostia Community Museum.
The Kamoinge Workshop is a photography collective that was founded in 1963. In 2013, the group stood as “the longest continuously running non-profit group in the history of photography.” The collective was born when two groups of African-American photographers came together in collaboration. The first group, named Group 35, consisted of photographers James Ray Francis, Earl James, Louis Draper, Herman Howard, Calvin Wilson, and Calvin Mercer. Louis Draper was especially crucial to its founding. The first director of the group was Roy DeCarava, who led the collective from 1963 to 1965.
James M. Mannas Jr. is an American photographer, film director, cinematographer and writer. He is recognized as one of the founding fifteen members of the Kamoinge Workshop (1963), which evolved from the union of two separate groups of African American photographers who were based in New York City. His work depicts African American New York City street life, avant-garde jazz musicians; dancers; portraits; landscapes as well post-colonial Guyana which can be found on his instagram. A large number of his Guyana captures are now under the Timothy Griffith Archives.
Peter Kayafas is an American photographer, publisher, and educator based in New York City. He creates black and white photographs that are "simple and spare, yet quietly overpowering with their evocation of a history on a scale beyond that of individual human lives."
Salimah Ali is an American contemporary photographer working in portraiture, documentary photography, and photo journalism.
Frank Stewart is an African-American photographer based in New York. He is best known for photographing prominent Jazz musicians.
