With just a few photographs within his collection, Polite relays the rich history of his family with intimate glimpses into his family circle including images of this mother and father when they were young.

“Genealogy is abut family records but I think it’s important to have pictures too.”  Marc Polite has becoming the caretaker of the family photos adding his own digital images to his precious collection.

Marc Polite lives and works in New York City and is passionate about African American history and culture.  Marc’s popular Blog “Polite On Society” won the Best Black Blog of 2011  ( http://marcpolite.com )

Voza Rivers has been instrumental in the spread of Diasporic culture through the arts for over thirty years. The Producer of Sarafina!, which brought voices of South Africa to Broadway; Chairman of the Harlem Arts Alliance; Co-Founder and Executive Producer of the IMPACT Repertory Theatre, and heavily involved in many other organizations dedicated to black culture, Voza joined filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris and the Digital Diaspora Family Reunion at the Harlem Stage to share with us photographs from his personal history.

Over the years Rivers has been behind the scenes producing and co-producing everything from theatre, to live concerts, and documentary film while remaining at the forefront of empowering the community through performing arts.

Here he takes the opportunity to pay respects to his mentors as we learn about how and why Rivers has been able to craft a career that has brought him from South Africa, to Japan, and even to a grammy nomination.

North County Times Article

by: Patricia Morris Buckley

Escondido is a long way from the slums of Cincinnati where photographer Major Morris grew up during the 1930s. But he still remembers those early days, and that’s the basis of his latest solo show, “Urbana.”

“Major Morris: Urbana” —- opening Saturday at ArtHatch at Distinction Gallery —- is a collection of 23 black-and-white photographs that Morris took in the ’60s and early ’70s.

Although Morris’ photographs have been shown many times in North County over the past 20 years, the ArtHatch exhibit features many photographs never shown before locally, according to exhibit curator and gallery owner Melissa Inez Walker.

“I went through hundreds of negatives to choose 13 I have never seen printed and that are also not included in his book,” Walker said, referring to Morris’ new book of photographs, “Nurture Their Dreams,” which he’ll be signing for buyers at an opening reception Saturday.

Many of the photographs in “Urbana” feature children playing in the suburbs of Boston and Philadelphia.

“I was an urban child,” said Morris, now 90 years old and retired in Escondido. “This was something I knew something about. I was fascinated with these children and remembering myself at the age when we could make something out of nothing.”

Read more: http://bit.ly/t5mbCH

Currently on Exhibition at: California State University, Northridge Art Galleries

Identity and Affirmation: African American Post War Photography consists of 145 images produced by Los Angeles artists, exploring modernist tendencies in the work of the artists as they embraced and depicted the vibrant development of the arts, music, politics, family, and social life in the Black community and Los Angeles at large. The innovative improvisations of jazz, of particular importance during this period, 1945 – 1980, can be seen in the work of these photographers in both their subjects and approaches to photography. The photographs will be drawn from the collections of nine photographers whose work makes up the majority of the approximately 850,000 African-American images held in the archives of the Institute including Roland Charles, Guy Crowder, Jack Davis, Bob Douglas, Joe Flowers, Maxie Floyd, Calvin Hicks, Bob Moore, and Charles Williams.

For more Information on the Exhibit please visit The Institute for Media Arts site at : http://bit.ly/vORc1a

Widely known for his self-portraiture and explorations of identity in his photographs, videos, and performances, artist Lyle Ashton Harris has spent the last decade creating a monumental series of sepia-toned portraits with the large-format Polaroid camera. These 200 portraits of family, friends, cultural figures, celebrities, and fellow artists blur conventional roles, identities, and racial categories in subtle plays of light and shadow.

Marking the publication of Excessive Exposure, a major new book from Gregory R. Miller & Co. which collects the complete series of “Chocolate Portraits,” acclaimed artist Chuck Close, one of today’s most original creators of portraits in both painting and photography, joins Harris in a conversation on topics ranging from portraiture and photography in the context of the contemporary art world to aspects of their own art-making practices.

Whole article>>>

Donna Cashman and Shannon Danzy bring a mother daughter perspective to uncovering one’s family history as they share family photographs with Thomas Allen Harris, and us, at the Digital Diaspora Family Reunion (DDFR) Roadshow held at the Harlem Stage in New York City.

Inspired by a dusty shoebox found in an old closet, this family exemplifies to us how knowing your family history can inspire our lives today. Shannon tells us how when she was in college she often felt uncomfortable talking about her family’s past but when she learned about her Grandfather and the history of her family, she had a very different feeling!

Armed with photographs, documents, and stories of her family’s challenges and triumphs, Shannon has learned about her family history which she can now share proudly.

Arianne Edmonds reveals the stories of her family history to Thomas Allen Harris during the Digital Diaspora Family Reunion (DDFR) Roadshow held at Harlem Stage. Like many American Families, the Edmonds have worked tirelessly to reclaim their heritage. Arianne shares her families’ journey from Mississippi Freedom Schools after the Civil War to venturing out west to homestead in the early days of Los Angeles history and culture.

Legendary Pittsburgh photographer Charles “Teenie” Harris (1908-1998) once quipped, “I let my pictures do the talking for me.” And considering the retrospective exhibit of his work that opened Friday at Carnegie Museum of Art, his words could not ring more true.

Ten years in the making, the spectacular multimedia display is housed in the first of the museum’s three massive Heinz Galleries.A total of 987 photographs cycle through a 20-plus-minute larger-than-life presentation of Harris’ photographs — backed by a swing-style soundtrack composed by the Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild’s Jay Ashby

“The images are divided into seven themes,” says Louise Lippincott, Carnegie curator of fine arts and exhibition project manager. “Rise and Fall of The Crawford Grill, Urban Landscapes, Gatherings, Words and Signs, At Home, Crossroads, and Style.”

To view the full article, visit www.pittsburghlive.com

As a student in Jamaica, Albert Chong discovered photography almost by accident. He recalls how he was quickly captivated by the magic of the medium.

It wasn’t exactly a sucker punch, but Jules Allen was struck by what he found upon entering into Gleason’s Gym: sweat-soaked champs and punch-drunk pugs. Gangsters and posers. Men with hats, stogies and secrets. The leonine and the louche. Wiry trainers possessed of supreme cool and confidence.

New York Times, Blog – Lens, October 14, 2011
The Sweet Science of Body and Soul
By DAVID GONZALEZ

Mr. Allen — no stranger to the latter two traits — had gone there to train. He stayed to make pictures. Now, more than 30 years later, he has published those images in “Double Up,” a book that details the bruised beauty he encountered at Gleason’s.

“This was the book I had come to New York to do,” said Mr. Allen, 64, who relocated from San Francisco in 1978. “I didn’t know at the time it would be a boxing book. But I had come here to do something of substance. I wanted to do something culturally specific that would allow me to be culturally general.”

Those principles have guided much of Mr. Allen’s work over the years, which encompasses a number of photographic series on hats, marching bands and nudes, amassing a document of contemporary African-American life. The work is also a pointed response to the kind of photography that he grew up seeing, which presented African-Americans as quiet victims, “folks sitting on the porch” he calls the genre.

“My whole theme as a photographer was I was interested in photographing African-American culture more than anything else,” said Mr. Allen, who has long taught at Queensborough Community College. “I wanted to show a culture of activity. I was tired of seeing photographs of black people sitting on the porch doing nothing. Being victimized. Being dependent. We do things.”

His subjects at Gleason’s were hardly passive. They held their ground.

“Black men are on equal ground in the gym,” he said. “There, you really were what you did. Whatever racism existed, it did not seem to have much effect on the fighters in the room. It was a question of character. It was a place where people seemed to be more equal.”

The idea that he would step into Gleason’s to train in 1983 was not out of character for him. After he graduated from art school in California, he went on to earn a master’s degree in psychology, specifically, he said, to improve his understanding of human nature and photography.

“Before I had no way to approach a disciplined, organized body of work, I was just taking pictures,” he said. “Psychology gave me a context in which I could actually look at the work. How I dealt with what I was looking at. How to talk to people. How to listen to people.”

Jules Allen Website: http://www.julesallenphotography.com/
For the full New York Times article: http://nyti.ms/s60DDu