Kwame Brathwaite

Kwame Brathwaite (January 1, 1938 – April 1, 2023) was an American photojournalist and activist known for popularizing the phrase "Black is Beautiful" and documenting life and culture in Harlem and Africa.

Born Gilbert Ronald Brathwaite in Brooklyn on January 1, 1938 and brought up in the South Bronx, to immigrant parents from Barbados, who chronicled the cultural, political, and social developments of Harlem, Africa, and the African diaspora.

As a boy in the early 1950s, he was enrolled at School of Industrial Art (now the High School of Art and Design).

With his older brother Elombe Brath, Brathwaite founded the African Jazz Art Society and Studios in 1956 and Grandassa Models in 1962.

In 2021, the Pérez Art Museum Miami acquired "Untitled (AJASS Model on Black Background)" (1970s/2019)," portraying a female model figure dressed in patterns resembling quilts created in African American communities, such as those made at Gee's Bend, in Alabama. The artist is a major figure in the Black is Beautiful movement.

Brathwaite died in Manhattan on April 1, 2023, at the age of 85.

He adopted the name Kwame in the early 1960s, a tribute to Kwame Nkrumah, the first leader of post-colonial Ghana.

In the 1960s, his work also appeared in New York Amsterdam News, The City Sun, and The Daily Challenge.

He photographed concerts of Stevie Wonder, Bob Marley, James Brown, and Muhammad Ali.

On January 28, 1962, with his brother Elombe Brath, Brathwaite staged the Naturally '62 pageant, the first of a series of pageants to feature only black models.

The 1962 pageant was titled The Original African Coiffure and Fashion Extravaganza Designed to Restore Our Racial Pride & Standards. Held at the Harlem Purple Manor, a nightclub on East 125th Street, it helped to popularize the phrase "Black Is Beautiful" that was printed on the pageant's poster.

The Naturally pageants ran for five years, with the last one held in 1966.

In 2017, Brathwaite was honored at the 75th Aperture Gala.