While everyone is familiar with the expression “Black is beautiful,” few know who popularized it. It’s to an African-American photographer that we owe, more than a slogan, an aesthetic specific to the community. Originally from Brooklyn, Kwame Brathwaite (1938-2023) founded a movement in the 1960s whose ambition was to portray an original culture that emancipated itself from the dominant culture. By co-creating AJASS and the Grandassa models with his brother Elombe Brath who came up with the name (lifelong president of the organization), Brathwaite inaugurated with the photographic medium a mode of free representation of the black body. We no longer straighten our hair; skin color is celebrated. Inspired by jazz, funk, and blues, he organized events—fashion shows that embraced both the heritage of the African continent and the aspirations of the African-American minority, and became the official photographer of Stevie Wonder and The Stylistics. The exhibition is the photographer’s first retrospective organized in Europe.
This exhibition is part of a trilogy devoted to African-American photography, begun in the summer of 2024. This trilogy illustrates the desire to think of the exhibition not as a final point, but as part of a whole, an entry into a constellation of narratives. Three photographers, three perspectives, three complementary discourses, are chosen to address the question of the representation of a community: Stephen Shames, Bayeté Ross Smith, and Kwame Brathwaite.
Curated by François Cheval, Yasmine Chemali. In partnership with the Kwame Brathwaite Archive. This exhibition is part of the Rencontres d’Arles program as part of the Grand Arles Express.
Kwame Brathwaite
: Black is Beautiful
Centre de la Photographie de Mougins
July 5 – October 5
