By Jenna Jarrah
This week the Getty Museum celebrated the opening of its new exhibition, “Photography and the Black arts movement,1955-1985,” which documents the history of the Black civil rights movement in Los Angeles through art and photography.
The national exhibit started in the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., and made its way to Los Angeles. The exhibit combines documentary, fashion, and everyday photography that focuses on the Black struggle for civil rights in Los Angeles through the work of Los Angeles-based photographers during that time.
“We started with 1955 not only because of the activism that many of the civil rights photographers were creating at the time, but the crucial period of the Montgomery bus boycott, and the impact of the horrific death of Emmett Till had on the black community,” said Deborah Willis, artist and author of Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers, who also co-curated the exhibition.
That same year, Roy Deceraba, an African-American photographer from Harlem, published his photo-book “Sweet Flypaper of Life,” which portrayed the everyday lives of Black communities in Harlem. Accompanied by a poetic narrative by Langston Hughes, who is widely known as the leader of the Harlem Renaissance, the book celebrated the beauty, struggle, and humanity of Black life during that period.
These three events–the Montgomery bus boycott, the death of Emmett Till, and the publication of “Sweet Flypaper of Life”–marked the trajectory of black photography, says José Luis Benavides, director of the Tom & Ethel Bradley Center at CSUN.
He said, “It was a really interesting year for Black history, and the images show the power of the protests, civil rights, and the Black Freedom movement that was coming. It shows the strength and beauty of Black life from inside. It shows the hostility of people who were opposed to black people having equal rights.”
Jose Luis Benavides is the director of the Tom & Ethel Bradley Center housed in CSUN’s University Library. Photos from the center are currently part of a show at the Getty called, “Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955-1985.” (Photo by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)In the period between 1955 and 1985, the black civil rights movement saw sweeping social change. Milestones for Black civil rights included the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended Jim Crow laws and legal segregation; the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which ended barriers to voting, like literacy tests, and resulted in a surge of voter registration and the election of Black officials to public office across the South; and the landmark decision of Loving vs.Virginia in 1967 by the Supreme Court, which legalized interracial marriage nationwide.
Emerging from the civil rights movement was the Black power movement, where black people looked to affirm their own communities, their rights, and create their own image.
The two movements together created the Black Freedom movement, which was the transformative struggle for civil rights, economic justice, and racial dignity during the period of 1940s to the 80s.
“Los Angeles’s history is not well known in the larger tallying in the history of these movements, and the work of these photographers reflect the struggle of Black communities in the west coast, particularly Los Angeles,” said Benavides.
Of the many art and artists featured, the exhibition features nine images on loan from the collections by African American photographers at the Tom and Ethel Bradley Center at CSUN. They include works by Roland Charles, Howard Morehead, Calvin Hicks, WIllie Middlebrook Jr., and Harry Adams.
“The purpose of the exhibit is to think about how culture, history, and arts intersect, and to visualize these times,” noted Willis.
The exhibition opened on February 24, and will run through June 14. Admission to the Getty museum is free for all guests.
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