An unfettered moment of glee at work, a young girl pining over a doll in a window display, a sign thrust into traffic reading “We Are TIRED OF WAITING.” Black midcentury photographers captured the agony, ecstasy, and banality of life lived in resistance, from the streets to the family dinner table, leaving behind a trove of work whose influence is deeply felt in today’s material culture.
“The crucial decades of the mid-20th century continue to reverberate in contemporary politics,” notes Mazie Harris, the Getty Center’s associate curator in the Photographs Department, “as well as in the types of art and artistic communities that are thriving today.”
The institution’s new show, “Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955–1985,” traveling from the National Gallery of Art and on view view Feb. 24 through June 14, makes this case in 150 images. Among them are works by Gordon Parks, Ming Smith, and Carrie Mae Weems that capture churchgoers, protesters, and couples leaning into each other on the bus. “I’m excited for visitors to find a piece that really resonates with their way of thinking about the world,” says Harris, “with all its problems and its moments of beauty.”
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