KAMOINGE workshop Archive

 The Photography Collections Preservation Project (PCPP) is launching a three-year project with the Kamoinge Workshop. Founded in 1963 in Harlem, Kamoinge (the Kenyan Kikuyu word for “collective”) aims to represent the lives of African Americans through photography. Its goal is to challenge stereotypes in the media, providing positive and complete images.

Kamoinge’s group of fifteen founders included Herman Howard, Calvin Mercer, Herbert Randall, Shawn Walker, Louis Draper, and Roy DeCarava. DeCarava, an artistic innovator who served as Kamoinge’s first director, was well-known for his chronicles of daily life in Harlem, the civil rights movement, and jazz. Under his leadership, the group received early support from cultural influencers including Henri Cartier- Bresson, Langston Hughes, and James Van Der Zee. Today, Kamoinge’s 20+ members include Anthony Barboza, Shawn Walker, and Ming Smith Murray.

This project launches amidst a growing interest in Kamoinge members’ work, as well as that of African-American photographers generally. Kamoinge photographers are featured in the exhibition Soul of a Nation, which is currently in San Francisco having been at The Broad, Los Angeles (2019), after showing at The Brooklyn Museum (2018), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (2018), and the Tate Modern (2017). Other upcoming exhibitions include Working Together: Louis Draper and the Kamoinge Workshop at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts ( February, 2020) which will then travel to the Whitney Museum of American Art.( July, 2020). The Workshop has also been exhibited at the International Center of Photography, New York; George Eastman Museum, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Studio Museum, Harlem, New York; The New York Public Library, and Harvard University among other institutions.

Further Reading

• Timeline of Kamoinge’s History and Influence

• Catalog of Kamoinge Ephemera

• The Kamoinge Website

• The Kamoinge Blog

• Articles:

  • When the white establishment ignored these black photographers, the Kamoinge collective was born, Timeline, March 2018

  • Photographer Beuford Smith on Kamoinge, The Kamoinge Blog, March 2015

• Current and Upcoming Exhibitions:

  • Patience and Perseverance: The Black Photographers Annual, Volume 4, The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA — November 10, 2018 through May 11, 2019

  • Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, The Broad, Los Angeles — March 23, 2019 through September 1, 2019