Free Food for the Community Programme, 1971, Oakland. Photograph by Stephen Shames
(via queennubian)
I will not act in another Hollywood picture until the prejudice is removed against colored actors in dramatic roles. Personally, I will not accept any maid parts. I am not a maid and will not [act] like one. - Nina Mae McKinney
(via bad-dominicana)
HAPPY BIRTHDAY DORTHEA LANGE (117)
Florence Owens Thompson (September 1, 1903 – September 16, 1983), born Florence Leona Christie, was the subject of Dorothea Lange’s photo Migrant Mother (1936), an iconic image of the Great Depression. The Library of Congress entitled the Migrant Mother image, “Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo, California.”
In March 1936, after picking beets in the Imperial Valley, Thompson and her family were traveling on US Highway 101 towards Watsonville in hopes of finding more work. On the road, the car timing chain snapped and they coasted to a stop just inside a pea-picker’s camp on Nipomo Mesa. While Jim Hill, her husband, and two of Thompson’s sons took the radiator, which had also been damaged, to town for repair, Thompson and some of the children set up a temporary camp. As Thompson waited, Dorothea Lange, working for the Resettlement Administration, drove up and started taking photos of Florence and her family. Over 10 minutes she took 6 images.
(via largerloves)
James Dean and Eartha Kitt in NYC.
(Source: thelittlefreakazoidthatcould, via thetaoofzoe)
(via depend-on-yourself)
Andre Leon Talley @OfficialALT with his then boss Eunice Johnson (Yves Saint Laurent is in the background) in 1981. Mrs. Johnson, who ran the Ebony Fashion Fair shows for decades, is featured in the Wall Street Journal’s Style section today: How a Couture Pioneer Changed Fashion.
(via queennubian)
The girlfriend of a young Masai man measures and admires his hair.
Amongst the Masai, warriors are the only members of the community permitted to wear their hair long, which is usually woven into tiny twists that are dressed and styled with animal fat and ocher. Some then use cotton or wool threads to lengthen their hair.
When they become elders and go through the Eunoto, their long locks are shaven off.
(East Africa, circa 1967 | Ph: Mirella Ricciardi)
(via ausetkmt)
Our real first gay president
The new issue of Newsweek features a cover photo of President Obama topped by a rainbow-colored halo and captioned “The First Gay President.” The halo and caption strike me as cheap sensationalism. I realize airport travelers look at a magazine for 2.2 seconds before moving on to the next one. I grant that this cover will probably get Newsweek a 4.4 second glance. I also understand that Newsweek is desperate for sales. Nevertheless, I doubt that the Newsweek of old, before it was sold for a dollar, would have pandered as shallowly.
The caption is a superficial way to characterize an important development of thought that the president — along with the country — has been making over recent years. It is also entirely wrong. Like the mini-furor a couple of months back about the claim that Richard Nixon was our first gay president, the story simply ignores that the U.S. already had a gay president more than a century ago.
There can be no doubt that James Buchanan was gay, before, during and after his four years in the White House. Moreover, the nation knew it, too — he was not far into the closet.
Today, I know no historian who has studied the matter and thinks Buchanan was heterosexual. Fifteen years ago, historian John Howard, author of “Men Like That,” a pioneering study of queer culture in Mississippi, shared with me the key documents, including Buchanan’s May 13, 1844, letter to a Mrs. Roosevelt. Describing his deteriorating social life after his great love, William Rufus King, senator from Alabama, had moved to Paris to become our ambassador to France, Buchanan wrote:
I am now “solitary and alone,” having no companion in the house with me. I have gone a wooing to several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any one of them. I feel that it is not good for man to be alone; and should not be astonished to find myself married to some old maid who can nurse me when I am sick, provide good dinners for me when I am well, and not expect from me any very ardent or romantic affection.
(via allrightmrdemille)
What an amazing photo! Found this on my recent business trip to NYC.
Measuring 3 x 4 3/4 inches, it likely dates from the 1940s & is printed on the kind of paper that is characteristic of photobooth photos from this era. It was likely shot at a carnival or local county fair, but I’ve never been certain whether this type of portrait was mechanical, like in a booth, or whether a photographer was involved. There is so much to like about this image, but I was partly drawn to it because it reminds me of the recently published book by Leon Borenzstein titled American Pictures (Nazraeli Press), which we have at Ampersand. This book is one of my early favorites of 2012 & features portrait photographs he shot of families in the late 70s & 80s. The backdrop is such a key component to his photographs, as is the case here—the tiled floor, simple bench & loose backdrop remind us that a photographic process has taken place. This may be obvious, but details like this recall the various types of photography that no longer exist in the digital age. Not only would it have been cool to converse with this stately African American couple, it would have been amazing to meet the photographer behind the camera.
- Collection -
04.12.2012
(Source: ampersandgallery, via queennubian)
