National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens

EΜΣΤ is pleased to announce the first solo presentation in Greece of the critically acclaimed photographer Lola Flash. Working at the forefront of queer visual politics for more than four decades, photographer Lola Flash’s work challenges stereotypes and gender, sexual, and racial preconceptions. An active member of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) during the time of the AIDS epidemic in New York City, Flash was notably featured in the 1989 “Kissing Doesn’t Kill” poster. Their art and activism are profoundly connected, fueling a life-long commitment to visibility and preserving the legacy of LGBTQIA+ and communities of colour worldwide.

SALT (2011–ongoing) is a series of portraits that feature iconic women aged over seventy, who have had a quiet impact on their respective worlds and are still passionately engaged in their life’s work. In a culture where beauty is equated with youth, these women are not only beautiful but accomplished and making significant contributions to society. This intimate portrait series reflects their wisdom, attractiveness and power which is often disregarded because of ageism.

The subjects of the exhibition include, among others, Tony Parks, photographer and daughter of legendary photographer Gordon Parks; Koho, a master sumi-e painter; and renowned activist Esther Cooper Jackson. The portraits were taken where their subjects felt most at home, in order to capture the texture of their private lives.

SALT aims to challenge the erasure and invisibility that older women experience and to highlight the deep-rooted cultural and social biases that remove them from the public sphere. Flash works in the tradition of twentieth-century portraiture, using a 4×5 large format camera, as they believe that this process conveys the importance of the sitting to the subject, and yields a truer image.

https://www.emst.gr/en/exhibitions-en/lola-flash-salt

Opening Thursday, June 13, 5–8 PM

Photographers Lola Flash and Alice O’Malley are both veterans of women’s clubs and AIDS activism in 1990s New York. Howl! Happening is pleased to present their individually curated slide shows, primarily featuring images from that indelible decade, displayed on opposite walls of the gallery.

By 1990, photo slide shows had become a nearly instant, affordable way to celebrate queer beauty and militant eroticism within our clubhouses. Group empowerment and reflecting our unity were crucial during those heady years. We railed against censorship and queer phobia, while AIDS ravaged friends, family, and lovers, because we had no effective medicines to suppress it and a government that vilified us. These photographs gave us visibility and strength. Come see.

In addition, the exhibition will feature a constellation of prints from Alice O’Malley’s slide show, along with Lola Flash’s vibrant metal portraits of downtown New York LEGENDS and a trio of images from her surmise series.

https://www.howlarts.org/event/lola-flash-and-alice-omalley/

Now in its second iteration, this biennial exhibition, produced by Mighty Real/Queer Detroit, explores the mirroring relationship between art and self as well as art and communities. The exhibition highlights the role of art in achieving personal visibility and social connection.

Art reveals who we are. And the mirroring power of art is key to creating positive and meaningful representations of LGBTQ+ folk. I’ll Be Your Mirror: Reflections of the Contemporary Queer examines timeless issues, which are especially relevant in the current political atmosphere when the freedom to express visibility is under mounting assault.

I'll Be Your Mirror: Reflections of the Contemporary Queer will run from Friday, May 31, to Sunday, June 30, in various Detroit galleries.

https://www.mrqd.org/

Presented at Art + Practice

Artist residencies are an important tool for artists to explore site-oriented practices and experience firsthand particular places and cultures. Bahia Reverb: Artists and Place presents the work of ten former fellows at the Sacatar Institute in Bahia, Brazil, all from North America and of African descent, to reflect on how Bahia, an epicenter of the African diaspora, has fueled their work and changed their understanding of themselves.

The artists are Sandra Brewster, Gerald Cyrus, Rik Freeman, Juan Erman Gonzalez, Mark Steven Greenfield, Karen Hampton, Germaine Ingram, Francis Tre Lawrence, Precious Lovell, and Tim Whiten.

This exhibition is curated by Bia Gayotto, independent curator, artist, and writer, and is co-presented by CAAM and Art + Practice as part of CAAM at A+P, a five-year collaboration.

See the event page here, and press release here.

Street Photography Festival – 2022

The Los Angeles Center of Photography is pleased to announce its Eighth Annual Street Photography Festival.

Kamoinge member Gerald Cyrus will be speaking at the Festival on Wednesday, April 6, 2022.
 

For full event information, click here.

In honor of Black History, LACP is proud to produce the pop-up exhibition “Fresh As ____”: Photographic Meditations from the Black Vanguard (Regarding A New Esthetic)” The exhibition is curated by Los Angeles-based photographer Ali LeRoi and Philadelphia-based photographer Shawn Theodore. Six talented artists were carefully selected to participate.

Kamoinge member Gerald Cyrus is amongst the six artists showing at the pop-up exhibit.

The exhibition will be on display at Sovern, 5757 West Adams Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90016, showing March 25-27, 2022. An opening reception is scheduled for Thursday, March 24, 7-10 pm PST, 2022. Please RSVP for the reception HERE.

Bruce Silverstein Gallery is pleased to present Adger Cowans: Footsteps, an exhibition of the artist’s photographs from 1955 to today. Featuring over thirty vintage and modern prints, Footsteps is the artist’s first solo New York gallery exhibition since 1985.

Bellarmine Hall Galleries

January 28 – June 18, 2022

Adger Cowans (American, b. 1936) is celebrated as one of the founding members of the Black photographers' group called Kamoinge. Curated by Halima Taha, PhD, this exhibition will explore how Cowans uses photography as a vehicle to articulate beauty within the human condition, and the world in which we live, and will feature over fifty works from across his illustrious career as a photographer of portraiture, landscape, and film.

https://www.fairfield.edu/museum/exhibitions/upcoming-exhibitions/adger-cowans/index.html

BAM Sign on the corner of Lafayette and Flatbush in Brooklyn

“Salvation: A State of Being” is a group exhibition that meditates on how Black artists utilize their practice as a forum to reflect and express notions of self-love, self-esteem, self-determination, and self-actualization. Inspired by the seminal text by the late trailblazing Black feminist and author bell hooks, Salvation: Black People and Love, this exhibition seeks to explore how Black image-making actively functions as a vehicle of resistance against the dehumanization of Black people and a device to guide us toward an expansive view of the Black imagination.

“Salvation: A State of Being” is also an homage to the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by offering two questions for us to ponder: What is love? What is next in the journey toward liberation? Ossei-Mensah invites these seven photographers to reflect on these queries and share works from their oeuvres that best engage with these ideas and provide further food for thought as we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and start 2022.

SHIFTING GAZE: A RECONSTRUCTION OF THE BLACK & HISPANIC BODY

CONTEMPORARY ART FROM THE COLLECTION OF DR. ROBERT B. FELDMAN

MARCH 1 - JUNE 20, 2021
PEELER ART CENTER, LOWER GALLERY

Virtual Exhibit here.

Fort Scott – Kyle Johnson and Eli Reed will be the recipients of the “Gordon Parks Choice of Weapons Award” at the annual celebration this October 7-9, 2021 in Fort Scott, Kansas. The celebration is in honor Fort Scott native Gordon Parks, noted photographer, writer, musician, and filmmaker. The Choice of Weapons Award was established in Parks’ honor to be given annually at the Celebration.

Named after his autobiography of the same name, the award seeks to honor a recipient who exemplifies the career and character of Gordon Parks. Previous recipients include actor and musician Avery Brooks, photographer Howard L. Bingham, Elizabeth Eckford and Ernest Green, two of the “Little Rock Nine,” Richard Roundtree, star of the Parks-directed film, Shaft, Nichelle Nichols of Star Trek fame, acclaimed actress Ruby Dee, photographer John Shearer, LIFE magazine photo editor Bobbi Burrows, Senator Nancy Landon Kassebaum, musicians Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis, Jr., editor Genevieve Young, filmmaker Kevin Willmott, educator Bernadette Gray-Little, Roger E. Mosley, star of the Parks-directed film, Leadbelly, Karole Graham, Stephen Perry and S. Pearl Sharp, cast members of the Parks-directed film, The Learning Tree.

Kyle Johnson, was born into a show business family - his mother is none other than Nichelle Nichols, known throughout the universe as Lt Uhura of the original Star Trek. He made his professional stage debut at age 7 in Only in America and his first television appearances include Day in Court, General Hospital, and The Fugitive. In his teens, he began to consider more seriously his desire to pursue a career in acting. Kyle’s appearance in Chuck Connors’ latter day vehicle, Cowboy in Africa, accelerated his critique of the film industry and it’s portrayal of Black people and culture. Encouraged by his grandmother, Lishia, to endure and overcome, he was soon cast in a groundbreaking collaboration between NBC and the Watt’s Writer’s Workshop - Losers Weepers. The following year Kyle got a call regarding a film in planning and met with Gordon Parks who decided on the spot that Kyle would portray him in the screen adaptation of his autobiographical novel, The Learning Tree. The film and it’s author have been lauded continuously since it’s release in 1969. In 1989 it was among the first 25 films inducted into the Library of Congress National Film Registry for their cultural, historical, or aesthetic value and now stands in the company of Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, and Citizen Kane.

Following The Learning Tree, Kyle compiled more credits including The Mod Squad, and as the son of Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee in The Sheriff. But Kyle’s misgivings about Hollywood’s stereotypical and demeaning portrayals of Black America were further reinforced. Hopes for a new dawn were dimmed by the emerging wave of Blaxploitation films and he withdrew from the film industry in the mid-70s. Johnson’s creative drive was redirected to music. He quickly developed his talents and attracted attention as a singer/songwriter performing in clubs throughout Los Angeles and San Francisco as a solo performer and with bands including Gideon & Power, a 2Beat Gospel/Funk band and The Skanksters, a rambunctious Reggae/ Ska combo. After moving to New Mexico in 1993, he became general manager of CATS! / Community Access Television of Silver, providing public, education, and government related programs in Silver City. In the early 2000’s, Johnson had a local am talk show that created controversy - Radio Free Silver! - that created such controversy that it was abruptly canceled mid- program under pressure from disgruntled advertisers.

In 2005 he became a founding board member, and later, general manager of Gila / Mimbres Community Radio. Over the next 15 years he led charge to get the station on the air and succeeded in making the station not only a valuable resource but indispensable institution in Southwest New Mexico. Kyle first visited New Mexico in 1979 and has lived along the Gila River with his wife, Monica Rude, and various cats and chickens since 1996... As quoted by Kyle, “it’s not the end of the world, but you can see it from there.”

Eli Reed, is an accomplished photographer that began his career as a freelancer in 1970. His work from El Salvador, Guatemala and other Central American countries attracted the attention of Magnum Photos in 1982, where he became a full member in 1988. Reed has authored several books, including Beirut: City of Regrets, Black in America (preface by Gordon Parks), The Lost Boys of Sudan, and Eli Reed: A Long Walk Home (introduction by Paul Theroux) an award winning retrospective.

His photographs have been recognized in numerous shows and exhibitions. Reed photographed the effects of poverty on children for a film documentary called America’s Children, Poorest in the Land of Plenty, narrated by Maya Angelou and televised on NBC on Mother’s Day. He has worked as a stills and specials photographer for many motion pictures including Rosewood, 2 Fast 2 Furious, Poetic Justice, Five Heartbeats, Ghosts of Mississippi, and Oscar winning films including A Beautiful Mind, 8 Mile, and the documentary about young people actively involved in the Civil Rights movement in Alabama, Mighty Times, The Children’s March. Reed has received many awards including, Pulitzer Prize Nominee (1981), Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University (1982-83), POY Nikon World Understanding Award (1983), Overseas Press Club (1983), World Press Daily Life Award 1988, W. Eugene Smith Grant in Documentary Photography (1992), his video documentary Getting Out shown at the New York Film Festival in 1993 and honored by the 1996 Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame International Film and Video Competition in the documentary category.

He just recently received three renown awards which are the National Press Photographers Association Joseph A. Sprague Memorial Award, Harvard University Nieman Foundation I.F. Stone Medal award for Long Term Investigative Journalism, and now the Gordon Parks Choice of Weapons Award (all in 2021).

Reed was a Clinical Professor of Photojournalism at The University of Texas in Austin (2005) until recently. He is currently involved in writing, working on his next photography book, along with preparing for planned exhibitions in Korea and China delayed because of the Pandemic. Reed is also involved with film projects as writer, producer, and director on current ongoing fictional and documentary film productions.

Kamoinge Exhibition - From Harlem to Metuchen

“Lens on Black Life”

ON DISPLAY MAY 8, 2021 – JUNE 30, 2021

Tu,We,Th 11:00 am – 6:00 pm; Fr,Sa 11:00 am – 6:00 pm; Su 11:00 am – 3:00 pm