Kwame Brathwaite

Philip Martin Gallery, Los Angeles

Acquired from the above by the present owner

Kwame Brathwaite, an American photojournalist and activist, who documented life in Harlem and Africa. He adopted the name Kwame in the early 1960s, honouring Ghana's first post-colonial leader, Kwame Nkrumah. Raised in the South Bronx by Barbadian immigrant parents, Brathwaite captured the cultural, political, and social changes in Harlem, Africa, and the African diaspora.

This early colour image by Brathwaite features Grandassa Model Clara Lewis Buggs, whose 1961 win in the African National Pioneer Movement's "Miss Natural Standard of Beauty" contest sparked his "Black is Beautiful" work. Buggs, known for wearing her hair in a "Zulu style," was featured in the Liberator in 1963, amongst other publications.