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Photo glamour icon3/31/2023 Today, when we aren’t looking at the digital photos that inundate us on our phones, we look to the past to celebrate the photographers who have broken rules as well as records - provocative and prolific artists like Horst P. What might leading figures of visual art such as Andy Warhol have done with these tools at their disposal? Kodak introduced roll film in the 1880s, allowing photography to become more democratic, although cameras wouldn’t be universally accessible until several decades later.ĭigital photographic techniques, software, smartphone cameras and social-networking platforms such as Instagram have made it even easier in the modern era for budding photographers to capture the world around them as well as disseminate their images far and wide. The French inventor was on to something for sure. The first permanent image created by a camera - which materialized during the 1820s - is attributed to Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. It has been corrected.Find a broad range of fine photography on 1stDibs today. Illustrated Black History: Honoring the Iconic and the Unseen by George McCalman (2022) is published by HarperOne and is available from online retailers.Įditor’s Note, 02/14/23 2:23 pm EST: An earlier version of this post misidentified the location of the Legacy Museum. “Even though the subtitle of this book is ‘the iconic and the unseen,’ I was way more interested in the unseen than the iconic.” George McCalman, lawman Bass Reeves George McCalman, artist Mickalene Thomas George McCalman, journalist and publisher Ida B. “There are these same people they trot out every year, and there’s no evolution and no learning,” he said. McCalman released the book in September, not February, to underscore his point that Black History is American history. The 145 portraits include activist and politician John Lewis and writer Maya Angelou, plus Bass Reeves, a lawman who is believed to be the inspiration for the Lone Ranger. “That tends to be the way that Black history is rendered - that we place people on pedestals, and they stop being human beings.” “If I’d done everyone in the same style, it all would have taken on either this sense of nobility or suffocation, and I was clear that I was allergic to that,” he said. George McCalman, drummer Terri Lyne Carrington McCalman used different techniques, including pen and ink, watercolors, colored pencils, and acrylics to make the portraits in the book, with drummer Terri Lyne Carrington looking energetic with her face striped in colors, singer Nina Simone drawn expressively in black, and artist Amy Sherald facing forward, looking contemplative in a yellow dress and a solid gray background. McCalman deliberately chose to define himself as an artist outside of this system, and says that he realized he was not just producing a book but a fine arts catalogue of his work. McCalman has worked as a graphic designer, creative director, and a cultural reporter, so he was familiar with the fine arts world and publishing, and he saw a lot of “White lady gatekeepers” in both. “No one can talk about the origin of without talking about how the Black community has been ground zero for this nation.” “It was just kind of the bullshit of the narrative of America, that we don’t talk honestly about how this country trafficked in human beings to become a superpower,” he told Hyperallergic during a phone call from Grenada, where he was spending the month of January. A visit to the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama, and the nearby lynching memorial convinced him that the book was critical. McCalman had some misgivings about creating a book - that as an immigrant born in Grenada, he wasn’t the right person, or that he was creating a target for people who would see it as an attack on White people. George McCalman, comedian Richard Pryor (all photos by George McCalman, courtesy HarperOne/HarperCollins Publishers)Ī few years ago, while creating a drawing of a Black pioneer every day for a month, San Francisco artist George McCalman got the idea for his book Illustrated Black History: Honoring the Iconic and the Unseen (HarperOne, 2022), which he wrote, designed, and illustrated.
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