This book, the first comprehensive history of black photographers, is Deborah Willis's long-awaited, groundbreaking assemblage of photographs of African American life from 1840 to the present. Willis, a curator of photography at the Smithsonian Institution, has selected nearly 600 stunning photographs, with 487 in duotone and 81 full color, of which more than 100 images have never before been seen. As this panoramic saga unfolds, we are given rich, hugely moving glimpses of African American life, from the last generation of slaves to the urban pioneers of the great migrations of the 1920,s from rare antebellum daguerreotypes of freemen to the courtly celebrants of the Harlem Renaissance, from civil rights martyrs to postmodern photographic artist of the 1990s.
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