CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 1/19/2026

Black Photojournalism, 1945 to 1984

Taken circa 1973, Ming Smith’s America Seen Through Stars and Stripes, New York City, NY is reproduced from Black Photojournalism, the catalog to the landmark exhibition on view through Monday, January 19—Martin Luther King Jr. Day—at the Carnegie Museum of Art. Spanning from 1945 through 1984, this powerful 400-page compendium features work by 57 Black photographers, both well known (like Smith, Kwame Brathwaite and Gordon Parks) and overlooked (until now). “One of the most persistently powerful means of resistance that Black photographers have employed is to simply show us as we are,” Deborah Willis writes, “in our full humanity as families, workers, friends, lovers, artists and leaders. These photographers were on the frontlines, focusing their cameras on both the beautiful and the most painful moments in Black neighborhoods and communities…”