Kwame Brathwaite

Kwame Brathwaite
Author: Kwame Brathwaite
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019
Genre: African American
ISBN: 9781597114431

Coincides with an exhibition of Brathwaite's work, 2019.

Dressed in Dreams

Dressed in Dreams
Author: Tanisha C. Ford
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2019-06-25
Genre: Design
ISBN: 125017354X

One of Essence's "10 Books We're Dying To Toss Into Our Summer Totes" From sneakers to leather jackets, a bold, witty, and deeply personal dive into Black America's closet In this highly engaging book, fashionista and pop culture expert Tanisha C. Ford investigates Afros and dashikis, go-go boots and hotpants of the sixties, hip hop's baggy jeans and bamboo earrings, and the #BlackLivesMatter-inspired hoodies of today. The history of these garments is deeply intertwined with Ford’s story as a black girl coming of age in a Midwestern rust belt city. She experimented with the Jheri curl; discovered how wearing the wrong color tennis shoes at the roller rink during the drug and gang wars of the 1980s could get you beaten; and rocked oversized, brightly colored jeans and Timberlands at an elite boarding school where the white upper crust wore conservative wool shift dresses. Dressed in Dreams is a story of desire, access, conformity, and black innovation that explains things like the importance of knockoff culture; the role of “ghetto fabulous” full-length furs and colorful leather in the 1990s; how black girls make magic out of a dollar store t-shirt, rhinestones, and airbrushed paint; and black parents' emphasis on dressing nice. Ford talks about the pain of seeing black style appropriated by the mainstream fashion industry and fashion’s power, especially in middle America. In this richly evocative narrative, she shares her lifelong fashion revolution—from figuring out her own personal style to discovering what makes Midwestern fashion a real thing too.

City of Bones

City of Bones
Author: Kwame Dawes
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2017-01-15
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0810134632

As if convinced that all divination of the future is somehow a re-visioning of the past, Kwame Dawes reminds us of the clairvoyance of haunting. The lyric poems in City of Bones: A Testament constitute a restless jeremiad for our times, and Dawes’s inimitable voice peoples this collection with multitudes of souls urgently and forcefully singing, shouting, groaning, and dreaming about the African diasporic present and future. As the twentieth collection in the poet’s hallmarked career, City of Bones reaches a pinnacle, adding another chapter to the grand narrative of invention and discovery cradled in the art of empathy that has defined his prodigious body of work. Dawes’s formal mastery is matched only by the precision of his insights into what is at stake in our lives today. These poems are shot through with music from the drum to reggae to the blues to jazz to gospel, proving that Dawes is the ambassador of words and worlds.

Middle Passages

Middle Passages
Author: Kamau Brathwaite
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
Total Pages: 134
Release: 1993
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780811212328

Kamau Brathwaite's poetry offers stunning collages devoted to the history, mythology, and language of the African diaspora, and has gained him a world reputation. Middle Passages, his most recent collection, is his sixteenth poetry volume, but his first with an American publisher. With notes of protest and lament, the fourteen poems of Middle Passages address the effects of the Middle Passage of slavery on the New World, and celebrate great musicians (Ellington, Bessie Smith), poets, heroes of the resistance, and Third World leaders Kwame Nkrumah, Walter Rodney, and Nelson Mandela. And as the London Times Literary Supplement noted, it is "a poetry that moves between rage and tenderness, doubt and displacement to affirmation... Middle Passages is a potent and effective book, a work of passion and integrity."

Let Your Motto Be Resistance

Let Your Motto Be Resistance
Author: Deborah Willis
Publisher: Smithsonian Books
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2007
Genre: History
ISBN:

"This collection of photographic portraits traces 150 years of U.S. history through the lives of well-known abolitionists, artists, scientists, writers, statesmen, entertainers, and sports figures. Drawing on the photography collection of the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, Deborah Willis celebrates the ways in which these images furthered recognition and equality in America, and even today challenge us all to uphold America's highest ideals and promises." --Book Jacket.

Liberated Threads

Liberated Threads
Author: Tanisha C. Ford
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2015-09-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1469625164

From the civil rights and Black Power era of the 1960s through antiapartheid activism in the 1980s and beyond, black women have used their clothing, hair, and style not simply as a fashion statement but as a powerful tool of resistance. Whether using stiletto heels as weapons to protect against police attacks or incorporating African-themed designs into everyday wear, these fashion-forward women celebrated their identities and pushed for equality. In this thought-provoking book, Tanisha C. Ford explores how and why black women in places as far-flung as New York City, Atlanta, London, and Johannesburg incorporated style and beauty culture into their activism. Focusing on the emergence of the "soul style" movement—represented in clothing, jewelry, hairstyles, and more—Liberated Threads shows that black women's fashion choices became galvanizing symbols of gender and political liberation. Drawing from an eclectic archive, Ford offers a new way of studying how black style and Soul Power moved beyond national boundaries, sparking a global fashion phenomenon. Following celebrities, models, college students, and everyday women as they moved through fashion boutiques, beauty salons, and record stores, Ford narrates the fascinating intertwining histories of Black Freedom and fashion.

The New Black Vanguard: Photography Between Art and Fashion (Signed Edition)

The New Black Vanguard: Photography Between Art and Fashion (Signed Edition)
Author: Antwaun Sargent
Publisher: Aperture Direct
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2019-10-29
Genre:
ISBN: 9781683952343

In a richly illustrated essay, curator and critic Antwaun Sargent addresses a radical transformation taking place in fashion, art, and the visual vocabulary around beauty and the body. In The New Black Vanguard, fifteen artist portfolios and a series of conversations feature the brightest contemporary fashion photographers. Their images and stories chart the history of inclusion (and exclusion) in the creation of the Black fashion image, while simultaneously proposing a brilliantly reenvisioned future.

Dawoud Bey

Dawoud Bey
Author: Dawoud Bey
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2018-09-18
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 9781477317198

Recipient of a 2017 MacArthur Foundation “genius grant,” Dawoud Bey has created a body of photography that masterfully portrays the contemporary American experience on its own terms and in all of its diversity. Dawoud Bey: Seeing Deeply offers a forty-year retrospective of the celebrated photographer’s work, from his early street photography in Harlem to his current images of Harlem gentrification. Photographs from all of Bey’s major projects are presented in chronological sequence, allowing viewers to see how the collective body of portraits and recent landscapes create an unparalleled historical representation of various communities in the United States. Leading curators and critics—Sarah Lewis, Deborah Willis, David Travis, Hilton Als, Jacqueline Terrassa, Rebecca Walker, Maurice Berger, and Leigh Raiford—introduce each series of images. Revealing Bey as the natural heir of such renowned photographers as Roy DeCarava, Walker Evans, Gordon Parks, and James Van Der Zee, Dawoud Bey: Seeing Deeply demonstrates how one man’s search for community can produce a stunning portrait of our common humanity.

I Can Make You Feel Good

I Can Make You Feel Good
Author:
Publisher: National Geographic Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020-08-25
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 3791386085

In his first published monograph, Tyler Mitchell, one of America's distinguished photographers, imagines what a Black utopia could look like. I Can Make You Feel Good, is a 206-page celebration of photographer and filmmaker Tyler Mitchell's distinctive vision of a Black utopia. The book unifies and expands upon Mitchell's body of photography and film from his first US solo exhibition at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York. Each page of I Can Make You Feel Good is full bleed and bathed in Mitchell's signature candy-colored palette. With no white space visible, the book's design mirrors the photographer's all-encompassing vision which is characterized by a use of glowing natural light and rich color to portray the young Black men and women he photographs with intimacy and optimism. The monograph features written contributions from Hans Ulrich Obrist (Artistic Director, Serpentine Galleries), Deborah Willis (Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University), Mirjam Kooiman (Curator, Foam) and Isolde Brielmaier (Curator-at-Large, ICP), whose critical voices examine the cultural prevalence of Mitchell's reimagining of the Black experience. Based in Brooklyn, Mitchell works across many genres to explore and document a new aesthetic of Blackness. He is regularly published in avant- garde magazines, commissioned by prominent fashion houses, and exhibited in renowned art institutions, Mitchell has lectured at many such institutions including Harvard University, Paris Photo and the International Center of Photography (ICP), on the politics of image making.

125th Street

125th Street
Author: Antonella Pelizzari
Publisher:
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2022-03-08
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 9783777437347

An unprecedented study of Harlem's 125th Street photography and cultural identity. Harlem's 125th Street is a marker of twentieth-century urban experience, a thoroughfare that encapsulates powerful stories of business and consumption, real estate and gentrification, glamour and entertainment, and political uprising. This book explores the constant mutation of this street life through the works of a large roster of photographers and performance artists. The photographs in this book represent narratives of resilience and stories of survival against a rapid and sweeping movement of history across 125th Street, where buildings and communities are periodically destroyed and built anew. The works shape a sense of belonging and identity that goes against the stereotyping and mystification of this neighborhood. It contributes to the writing of a new history of photography that is collective and collaborative. Among the artists featured are Dawoud Bey, Khalik Allah, Kwame Brathwaite, Jamel Shabazz, Hiram Maristany, Ming Smith, Ruben Natal San Miguel, Isaac Diggs & Edward Hillel, Lorraine O'Grady, and William Pope.