We have witnessed countless engaging features about photographers: Martin Parr. Maybe the film medium particularly shines when presenting exceptionally powerful visual compositions. Now arrives another exceptional case, by writer-director Yemi Bamiro, exploring the impressive career of Kwame Brathwaite—an artist, artist and civil rights advocate who embodied a special cultural-activist perspective.
In partnership with his sibling Elombe, he pioneered the slogan “Black Is Beautiful” during the 1960s by photographing the Harlem models in the cultural epicenter: emerging Black women who became the transformative standard for aesthetics, abandoning traditional grooming practices and the predominant Caucasian ideal of female beauty.
The Influence of a Revolutionary Slogan
This powerful statement became a powerful call to action, an visionary three-word manifesto for change. Merely declaring that black people radiated beauty emerged as a liberating power in art, social movements and the arts. The artist grew into a key figure in the social justice global Black cause by documenting the sports icon leading up to his iconic Rumble in the Jungle in that era.
He became the exclusive image creator for the band's African tour, and later was named the official visual chronicler for the historic Apollo theatre, building an amazing archive of African American artists. Together with his brother, he was the driving force behind bringing Nelson Mandela to address the public in the community.
Historical Recognition
His son the younger Brathwaite is interviewed the family's quest to achieve proper recognition for his father's legacy after he was painfully excluded in the nation's capital's cultural museum, inaugurated by the political leader in 2016.
This documentary further reveals the inexpressibly painful inspiration of the artist's dedication to image making: the horrendous photographs of the young victim, the adolescent civil rights lynching victim whose bereaved parent defiantly requested an public viewing so the horrific reality of bigoted brutality might not be covered up.
From Tragedy to Hope
From this representation of tragedy, Brathwaite discovered a kind of anti-epiphany that guided him toward images of community. His images beautifully expressed empowering beauty and frequently nuanced in approach: he curated a innovative symbolic representation of pride around which social causes could mobilize.
The documentary stands as an exhilarating chronicle of cultural impact that continues to resonate decades later.
