Everyday Beauty features fifty-five images that pay visual tribute to the extraordinary
style and aesthetic of African American figures, famous and anonymous,
by highlighting themes of self-representation, resilience, and civic engagement.
The photographs depict people across generations showing how staged and candid
moments can be both beautiful and precious. African Americans have long
recognized the power of images and used them to document moments—from the
monumental to everyday.
This latest volume in the critically acclaimed Double Exposure series presents
a range of photographic styles by celebrated photographers—such as Anthony
Barboza, Charles “Teenie” Harris, Addison Scurlock, Louis H. Draper, Devin
Allen (2017 Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship recipient), Arthur Rothstein,
and Dawoud Bey (awarded the MacArthur Fellows Program, MacArthur Fellowship, or "Genius Grant" in 2017)—as well as snapshots by unknown amateurs. There are remarkable
images by African American photographer John Johnson—whose plate
glass negatives offer a rare glimpse into the everyday life of African Americans
in Lincoln, Nebraska before World War I—and studio portraits by the Calvert
Brothers of Nashville, Tennessee, and William J. Kuebler, Jr. of Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, from the early twentieth century.
