Philip Martin Gallery is proud to present, "Diary: In the Studio," an online exhibition of new 70s photographs by Kwame Brathwaite. Kwame Brathwaite's images radiate the soul and energy of "Black is Beautiful.”
In the late 50’s, Kwame Brathwaite, a young New York-based photographer, started on a path that would define a new aesthetic. After a decade of work, "Black is Beautiful” had become a household phrase in the United States and around the world. Kwame Brathwaite achieved this goal in his gorgeous, glorious photographs that engage us as individuals while, at the same time, opening up ways to use mass-culture itself as a canvas - one that can be used to to celebrate human spirit and human beauty, promote important social narratives, and propagate economic and artistic opportunity.
The online exhibition, "Diary: In the Studio," focuses on Kwame Brathwaite's photographs of the 70s. Brathwaite began the 70s engaged with an important new motif fresh in his mind - a series of standing figures shot against colored and black and white backgrounds. Brathwaite's standing figures expand the visual field of his portrait heads of the mid/late 60s. In these works, completed at his 23rd Street studio in Chelsea (between 6th and 7th Avenue), Brathwaite uses a range of props and cloths. The standing figure images vibrate with feeling and release, rich in their skin tones, the lustrousness of which Brathwaite pairs with colorful patterned clothing. Movement is paramount in these pieces, reflecting perhaps Brathwaite's years of photographing musicians like Abbey Lincoln, sportspeople like Muhammad Ali and Alvin Ailey's dance company. The poetry of human form is recorded in a succinct ascending moment.
While some of the images entered mass media - Brathwaite's photographs of Marsha McBroom adorned album covers for The Stylistics and The Players' Association - many of them have never been publicly seen, having only been released by The Kwame Brathwaite Archive for the first time in association with the exhibition, “Kwame Brathwaite: Things Well Worth Waiting For,” now on view at ArtCenter College of Design (Pasadena, CA), where it travelled from Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, IL). In these photographs, Brathwaite takes on mass culture forms like print advertising, which often did not present Black consumers, and also music culture, working tirelessly to find new ways to depict Black Americans in public life. There is a profoundly sensitive artistic feeling in these pictures - a revelry in the joy, dignity and beauty of Kwame Brathwaite's subjects. Brathwaite, a committed revolutionary and committed humanitarian, engages in these pictures in the language of portraiture, connecting us with the figure we see in front of us and our own inner thoughts.
Kwame Brathwaite (b. 1938, New York, NY) is currently the subject of “Kwame Brathwaite: Things Well Worth Waiting For,” at ArtCenter College of Design (Pasadena, CA, travelled from Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL); and the group exhibitions, "Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys" Brooklyn Art Museum (Brooklyn, NY); and "Before You Now: Capturing the Self in Portraiture" Riverside Art Museum (Riverside, CA). A major museum European tour of Brathwaite's work is in formation to open in summer 2025. Upcoming group exhibitions include Philharmonie de Paris (Paris, France); Mead Art Museum (Amherst, MA); Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, IL); and Nevada Museum of Art (Reno, NV). Brathwaite was the subject of the major touring exhibition, “Kwame Brathwaite: Black Is Beautiful,” which opened at the Skirball Cultural Center (Los Angeles, CA); and traveled to the Museum of the African Diaspora (San Francisco, CA); Columbia Museum of Art (Columbia, SC); Blanton Museum of Art (Austin, TX); Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, MI); Reynolda House, (Winston-Salem, NC); New-York Historical Society (New York, NY) and Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts (Birmingham, AL). A 2019 monograph of the same title - now in its 5th printing - produced by Aperture Foundation, includes essays by Deborah Willis, Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts of New York University and Tanisha C. Ford, Associate Professor of Black American Studies and History at the University of Delaware. Brathwaite's work is featured in the touring exhibition, “Black American Portraits,” which opened at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, (Los Angeles, CA), and traveled to Spelman College Museum of Art (Atlanta, GA); and Memphis Brooks Museum of Art (Memphis, TN). Brathwaite's work recently appeared in “This Tender, Fragile Thing” at Jack Shainman Gallery (Kinderhook, NY); His work has recently been acquired by such institutions as Santa Barbara Museum of Art (Santa Barbara, CA); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles, CA); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Houston, TX); Minneapolis Institute of Art (Minneapolis, MN); Minnesota Museum of American Art (St. Paul, MN); Weisman Art Museum (Minneapolis, MN); Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University (Chicago, IL); Pérez Art Museum Miami (Miami, FL); Orlando Museum of Art (Orlando, FL); Columbia Museum of Art (Columbia, SC); National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution (Washington, DC); Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (Philadelphia, PA); Rhode Island School of Design Museum (Providence, RI); Reynolda House (Winston-Salem, NC); New Orleans Museum of Art (New Orleans, LA); The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College (Saratoga Springs, NY); Museum of the City of New York (New York, NY); The Studio Museum in Harlem (New York, NY); Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY); Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, NY); MIT List Visual Arts Center (Cambridge, MA); Hood Museum of Art (Hanover, NH) and Sharjah Art Museum (Sharjah, United Arab Emirates). Corporate collections include JPMorgan Chase Art Collection (New York, NY) and Sidley Austin LLP (New York, NY). Brathwaite’s work has recently appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Vogue, New York Post, New York Magazine, Aperture, and other publications. Brathwaite lived and worked in New York, NY. He passed away in New York in 2023.
“Diary: In the Studio" is on-line June 6 - 20, 2024. Kwame Brathwaite's work is the subject of a current solo exhibition, “Kwame Brathwaite: Things Well Worth Waiting For," at ArtCenter College of Design (Pasadena, CA); travelled from Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, IL). “Kwame Brathwaite: Things Well Worth Waiting For” is on view at ArtCenter College of Design (Pasadena, CA) through August 17, 2024.
Philip Martin Gallery is open Wednesday - Saturday from 11-5. Philip Martin Gallery is located at 3342 Verdugo Road, Los Angeles, CA 90065. For additional images or information please email info@philipmartingallery.com, or call 323-507-2037.
