As 2020 comes to a close, we at PCPP would like to reflect on another wonderful year working with the Kamoinge Workshop. At the beginning of this year, PCPP realized a long-sought goal of placing the collection of photographer Shawn Walker, a founder of the Kamoinge Workshop with the Library of Congress (LOC). Over the last 100 years, the Library has only collected smaller groups of photographs by African Americans. This acquisition is the first comprehensive archive by an African American photographer to be placed in the national library.
We were thrilled to see the announcement of this historic acquisition capture the attention of news and media outlets around the country. Most notably, PCPP’s partnership with Shawn Walker on placing his archive with LOC was written up in the New York Times. The acquisition also made headlines in the Washington Post, Smithsonian Magazine, ARTnews, NPR, and the Gothamist among many other publications. The Library of Congress also featured Walker’s work in their most recent magazine issue viewable here.
Shortly thereafter in late February, the coronavirus touched down in New York City which required PCPP to nimbly respond to new challenges of lockdown. We took the opportunity during these unusual times to add to the knowledge base of contemporary photographers, particularly of Kamoinge Workshop members. PCPP interviewed two current Kamoinge members, Vice President Russell Frederick and early member Danny Dawson. We spoke with Frederick about his experience documenting the George Floyd protests this past summer and visual activism in Black communities. In late November, we sat down with Danny Dawson to discuss his longtime career as a photographer, curator, filmmaker, and scholar.
There have also been two major exhibitions of the collective’s work in 2020. In February of this year, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts debuted Working Together: Louis Draper and the Kamoinge Workshop which the museum calls “an unprecedented exhibition that chronicles the first twenty years of the Kamoinge Workshop.” The exhibition at VMFA remained on view through October 18th, 2020. About a month later on November 21st in Kamoinge’s hometown, the Whitney Museum opened the exhibition to the public of New York City. PCPP’s intern, Ayesha Kazim, was able to see the show in-person and took photographs of the historic exhibition which can be viewed at PCPP’s Instagram. The exhibition at the Whitney has also garnered attention from the press in its first month on view–most recently in this piece published by the New York Times. Siddhartha Mitter writes, “influential in Black photography circles, Kamoinge is little-known beyond. “Working Together: The Photographers of the Kamoinge Workshop,” now at the Whitney Museum after originating at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, is the first museum show focused on the group since the 1970s…Kamoinge’s influence was at once powerful and narrow. By the early 1980s, figures who would go on to great acclaim in Black photography — like Carrie Mae Weems, Dawoud Bey, or the scholar Deborah Willis — had sought out members of the collective, and learned from them. But interest from mainstream museums is only recent. Mr. Walker’s archive was acquired by the Library of Congress this year.”
2020 has been a momentous year for the Kamoinge Workshop and PCPP is honored to have continued to work along side the collective through these unprecedented circumstances. We look forward to more successes for the group in 2021 and years to come.
Happy Holidays!
-PCPP