Harlem and the Kamoinge Workshop

Artists Anthony Barboza, C. Daniel Dawson, and Shawn Walker discuss the importance of Harlem in the development of their work and as the ground for the Kamoinge Workshop. In sharing their individual practices, they will reflect on Kamoinge’s role in the Black Arts movement as well as their efforts to preserve and share this history in their work. 

This event is moderated by Tanisha C. Ford, writer, cultural critic, and professor of history at the Graduate Center, CUNY. Ford is a co-founder of TEXTURES, a pop-up material culture lab creating and curating content on Black design, material life, and the built environment. She also co-edited, with Deborah Willis, Kwame Brathwaite: Black is Beautiful (Aperture 2019). 

Presented in collaboration with Aperture, this series of programs features conversations with artists from the Kamoinge Workshop included in the exhibition Working Together: Photographers of the Kamoinge Workshop. The talks explore the group’s genesis in Harlem in the 1960s, its role in the Black Arts movement, and the multidisciplinary interests and practices of its members, bringing together artists from the Kamoinge Workshop with scholars and critics of Black arts and culture. Aperture, a not-for-profit foundation dedicated to photography, connects the photo community and its audiences with the most inspiring work, the sharpest ideas, and with each other—in print, in person, and online.