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.
Timothy Greenfield-Sanders is an American documentary filmmaker and portrait photographer based in New York City. The majority of his work is shot in large format.
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.
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.
Deborah Willis is a contemporary African-American artist, photographer, curator of photography, photographic historian, author, and educator. Among her awards and honors, she is a 2000 MacArthur Fellow. She is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts of New York University. In 2024, she was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
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.
Vivian E. Browne was an American artist. Born in Laurel, Florida, Browne was mostly known for her painting series called Little Men and her Africa series. She is also known for linking abstraction to nature in her tree paintings and in a series of abstract works made with layers of silk that were influenced by her travels to China. She was an activist, professor, and has received multiple awards for her work. According to her mother, Browne died at age 64 from bladder cancer.
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 (MOMA) 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 Kamoinge was founded by Louis Draper, James "Jimmie" Mannas, Al Fennar, and Herbert Randall. The second group, named Group 35 consisted of photographers Ray Francis, Earl Jones, Louis Draper, Herman Howard, Calvin Mercer, and Mel Dixon. 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.
Delphine Diallo, or Delphine Diaw Diallo is a French-born photographer of Senegalese descent. She has previously lived in Paris and Saint-Louis, Senegal, but is now in Brooklyn, New York.
James "Jimmie" Mannas Jr. is an African American photographer, film director, cinematographer, and screenwriter. He is one of the fifteen founding members of the Kamoinge Workshop (1963), which evolved from the union of Kamoinge and Group 35, two groups of African American photographers based in New York City.
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.
