There have been many engaging documentaries highlighting image makers: Vivian Maier. It could be the film medium truly excels when displaying exceptionally powerful still images. Today we have another outstanding case, from creator Yemi Bamiro, exploring the extraordinary professional journey of Kwame Brathwaite—an artist, musician and African American activist who represented a special politico-aesthetic vision.
Together with his brother Elombe, he effectively created the expression “Black Is Beautiful” throughout the sixties by capturing the Harlem models in New York: youthful African American women who became the groundbreaking archetype for aesthetics, abandoning conventional beauty standards and the usual white ideal of female beauty.
The Impact of Three Words
The iconic phrase transformed into a powerful unifying message, an inspired memorable prose poem for transformation. Simply to assert that African Americans radiated beauty emerged as a liberating influence in art, politics and the arts. The artist emerged as a key figure in the social justice African diaspora movement by documenting the sports icon prior to his iconic championship fight in the seventies.
He was appointed the primary visual documentarian for the musical group's African tour, and subsequently was named the official visual chronicler for the iconic Harlem venue, creating an extraordinary archive of African American artists. In collaboration with his brother, he was the key organizer behind bringing the South African leader to address the public in the community.
Family Legacy
The photographer's offspring Kwame Jr is interviewed the family's campaign to achieve proper recognition for his family heritage after he was unjustly excluded in Washington DC's cultural museum, inaugurated by the political leader in this century.
The film also recounts the deeply tragic origin of the photographer's interest in image making: the horrendous pictures of the lynching martyr, the adolescent Black murder victim whose bereaved parent boldly insisted on an uncovered casket so the horrific reality of racist violence might not be covered up.
Amidst Sorrow to Hope
Through this image of horror, Brathwaite encountered a form of transformative realization that led him toward photographs of beauty. His work were eloquent of community pride and often nuanced in approach: he curated a fresh symbolic representation of strength upon which social causes could unite.
This represents an inspiring chronicle of artistic vision that persists in resonate decades later.
