Kwame Brathwaite: Black is Beautiful with texts

Kwame Brathwaite’s photography helped popularise the political slogan “Black Is Beautiful” in the late 1950s and 1960s – and this gorgeous new publication, which accompanies a retrospective of his work that has been touring the USA since 2019, clearly demonstrates its aptness. Brathwaite shot a multitude of images of Harlem’s artistic community as well as the Grandassa Models – a modelling troupe for black women that had been founded to challenge white beauty standards – with a sense of celebratory joy that remains deeply inspiring.