Publishing on March 3 from Aperture, Kinship & Community: Selections from the Texas African American Photography Archive presents an inspiring example of collective self-representation and portrays the role of Black photographers in creating an indelible record of American life. Drawn from the Texas African American Photography Archive, a visual record of Black culture since the 1870s, this publication of more than 150 images celebrates a proud but overlooked regional culture while testifying to the power of photography as a social tool.
Typically operating small studios that provided portraiture, promotional images, and event documentation, many of the photographers in Kinship & Community worked within their communities to develop an enduring vision of hope and uplift. Photographs by Marion Butts, Elnora W. Frazier, Earlie Hudnall Jr., Alonzo Jordan, and Benny A. Joseph, among others, record family gatherings, social traditions, educational milestones, sports achievements, local businesses, as well as the activism that defined the civil rights era. Their primary subject was the everyday expression of a vibrant and self-sufficient Black culture—an exhilarating achievement in the wider context of entrenched racial oppression.
Completing this volume is a vivid new photographic essay by artist Rahim Fortune, commissioned by Aperture and Documentary Arts, that considers the archive’s legacy and bridges it with the twenty-first century. From the summer of 2024 through the winter of 2025, Fortune made Between a Memory and Me, a series of photographs depicting various community events and gatherings across Texas. Fortune hoped to strike a balance between showing both youth and elders in landscapes that felt familiar to him, and the resulting images spark conversations across generations about the broader relationship people have with the land.
Kinship & Community is copublished by Aperture and Documentary Arts and features an introduction by scholar Deborah Willis, a conversation between historian Annette Gordon-Reed and Texas African American Photography Archive cofounder Alan Govenar, and essays by writers and curators Nicole R. Fleetwood and Brian Wallis. This project was made possible with generous support from Documentary Arts.
Kinship & Community : Selections from the Texas African American Photography Archive
Aperture
Format: Softcover
Number of pages: 240
Number of images: 155
Measurements: 8.5 x 10.8 x 1 inches
ISBN: 9781597115636
US $65.00 / CDN $88.00 / UK £50.00
www.aperture.org/books
