Kwame Brathwaite was an American photojournalist, born in the late 1930s graduated from the high school of art and design here in New York. After graduating he was mainly taking pictures of his environment in Harlem from the immigrants to the multitude of jazz performers and musicians of his time. Kwame loved it so much he founded African Jazz Art Society and Studios(AJASS) with some others who also felt an intrinsic love and sense of welcoming culture from the new genre of music at the time. His work shifted though at the beginning of the civil rights movement after seeing the images of Emmett Till. That shift led to the many successful exhibitions and galleries like  “Black is Beautiful” and his pageant “Naturally”. His exhibitions helped popularize the phrase and in conjunction with his society helped promote the central idea that all things black whether it’s our clothing, hair,music, and photos that everything we do is beautiful, which helped change many people’s way of viewing themselves as a people and other people who viewed african americans as lesser.I am choosing him to write about because I resonated with his ambitions to help the black community progress in such a beautiful way, but also because  the way he takes photos, I think is similar to how I would want to be able to capture an image. Even if its’ just a single person portrait the clarity, vibrancy and color used in the photo along with the meaning behind it like with the grandassa models, adds a certain level of weight to me that deserves observation. 

The photo that I will be discussing is one of the unnamed photos he had taken of Alvin Ailey dancers performing one of their longest running productions, Revelations. Revelations is about using dance with African spirituals, songs-sermons, holy blues, and gospels to explore the dichotomy of  places of deepest grief and holiest joys. To me I think he took this to show the women in the photo seem to have a kind of power. The golden circle on the red background representing the setting sun almost gives these two a semblance of a battle being fought.The stance he catches them in are symmetrical while the rest of the photo is asymmetrical.  The dim lighting,  borderline dark beautifully allows for the silhouette of these two dancers to become the focal point. From the fans breaking into the sun  and the negative space in between these dancers creating creating the mother goddess symbol also grants a bit of power to the photo. The photo captures a moment towards the end of the performance depicting the importance of church and religion. Like previously mentioned I think it is capturing the importance of women and the power they hold not only in themselves but as the backbone to tradition in a spiritual and religious aspect, it is very reflective of the work that he has done in the past as an strong advocate for black people and  women in particular.