History has seen many compelling features about image makers: Tish Murtha. Perhaps cinematic storytelling truly excels when displaying exceptionally powerful photographs. Today arrives one more remarkable example, by filmmaker Yemi Bamiro, exploring the extraordinary life's work of Kwame Brathwaite—an artist, artist and social justice champion who represented a unique artistic-political approach.
Alongside his family member Elombe, he effectively created the expression “Black Is Beautiful” during the sixties by documenting the Grandassa Models in the cultural epicenter: emerging women of color who emerged as the transformative template for aesthetics, moving beyond conventional grooming practices and the predominant Eurocentric standard of womanhood.
The Impact of a Simple Phrase
Black Is Beautiful transformed into a radical call to action, an inspired concise manifesto for change. Merely to assert that African Americans were beautiful became a empowering force in art, social movements and the arts. The photographer grew into a key figure in the civil rights pan-Africanist cause by documenting the sports icon before his iconic championship fight in the seventies.
He was appointed the primary photographer for the musical group's continental journey, and eventually assumed the role of the official visual chronicler for the legendary cultural institution, assembling an extraordinary archive of African American artists. In collaboration with his sibling, he emerged as the driving force behind securing Nelson Mandela to speak in Harlem.
Personal Journey
Brathwaite's son Kwame Jr is interviewed the their campaign to ensure appropriate credit for his family heritage after he was unjustly ignored in Washington DC's National Museum of African American History and Culture, opened by Barack Obama in this century.
The film also recounts the deeply tragic inspiration of the photographer's passion for visual storytelling: the shocking pictures of Emmett Till, the teenage civil rights tragic figure whose mourning family member courageously insisted on an open coffin so the horrific reality of bigoted brutality would not be concealed.
Amidst Sorrow to Empowerment
In this representation of horror, the artist discovered a type of transformative realization that led him toward visual representations of community. His images beautifully expressed celebratory strength and often nuanced in approach: he established a innovative iconography of empowerment through which activist groups could gather.
The documentary stands as an captivating chronicle of artistic vision that persists in inspire through the years.
