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.
