Louis H. Draper

1935–2002

Introduction

Louis Hansel Draper (September 24, 1935 – February 18, 2002) was a New York-based American photographer known for his images of Harlem in the 1960s and was founding member of the Kamoinge Workshop. His work was featured in several volumes of the publication, The Black Photographers Annual. In addition to his images of everyday people in urban settings, Draper photographed significant artists, intellectuals, and civil rights leaders like Fannie Lou Hamer, John Coltrane, Malcolm X, Miles Davis, and Langston Hughes. Draper's work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, The Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, among many other museums, public and private collections.

View the full Wikipedia entry

Information from Wikipedia, made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Accessed June 15, 2026.

Roles

Artist, photographer

ULAN identifier

500333536

Names

Louis H. Draper, Louis Draper, Lou Draper

View the full Getty record

Information from the Getty Research Institute's Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License. Accessed June 15, 2026.

Not on view

First acquired
2016

Date of birth
September 24, 1935

API
artists/17407

Wikidata
Q56025101



On the Hour

A 30-second online art project:
Frank WANG Yefeng, The Levitating Perils #2

Learn more about this project

Learn more at whitney.org/artport

On the Hour projects can contain motion and sound. To respect your accessibility settings autoplay is disabled.

The Whitney Museum will close early at 3 pm on Saturday, July 4.