We have witnessed many compelling documentaries about visual artists: Martin Parr. It could be the film medium particularly shines when presenting exceptionally powerful visual compositions. Today arrives a new remarkable case, by filmmaker Yemi Bamiro, exploring the extraordinary career of Kwame Brathwaite—a creative force, artist and civil rights advocate who represented a special cultural-activist perspective.
In partnership with his sibling Elombe, he virtually invented the phrase “Black Is Beautiful” during the 1960s by documenting the Grandassa Models in New York: young women of color who emerged as the transformative template for aesthetics, rejecting conventional beauty standards and the usual Caucasian ideal of womanhood.
The Power of a Revolutionary Slogan
This powerful statement became a radical unifying message, an inspired concise declaration for change. Merely declaring that people of color radiated beauty proved to be a empowering power in art, activism and creative expression. The artist emerged as integral to the Black power pan-Africanist struggle by photographing the legendary boxer before his legendary Zaire bout in 1974.
He served as the official image creator for the band's international performances, and eventually was named the house photographer for the iconic Apollo theatre, assembling an amazing archive of musical pioneers. In collaboration with Elombe, he became the key organizer behind securing Nelson Mandela to speak in New York.
Personal Journey
His son the younger Brathwaite recounts the family's quest to ensure proper recognition for his father's legacy after he was painfully excluded in the nation's capital's National Museum of African American History and Culture, inaugurated by the political leader in 2016.
The feature also recounts the inexpressibly painful origin of the photographer's passion for visual storytelling: the shocking photographs of the lynching martyr, the young African American lynching victim whose grieving mother defiantly demanded an uncovered casket so the violent nature of racial hatred would not be covered up.
Through Darkness to Beauty
From this image of horror, the visionary discovered a kind of profound understanding that led him toward visual representations of beauty. His photographs beautifully expressed community pride and frequently subtle in messaging: he established a fresh symbolic representation of strength upon which activist groups could gather.
It is an exhilarating record of cultural impact that persists in resonate decades later.
