The Woman Who Shaped a Generation of American Ads

If you were in the market for a new car or treat in the 1970s or ’80s, you’ve likely seen the work of Barbara DuMetz, but you probably didn’t know it.

She was one of the many pioneers in the movement to diversify commercial photography, both in front of and behind the camera. And you know who and what she’s photographed. The prolific Los Angeles–based artist has taken award-winning images for brands like Coca-Cola and Kraft as well as of big-name stars like Miles Davis and Betye Saar. Today, her pictures feel nostalgic, yet timeless, in their capturing of the universal—the joy of childhood play, the prestige of celebrity, or the undeniable cool of a good outfit and hairstyle.

DuMetz’s 1977 Kraft Foods Advertisement is featured in the Getty Center exhibition Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955–1985—on view through June 14, 2026—which explores the imagery that defined the influential cultural moment of Black revolution, struggle, and social progress. DuMetz sat down with exhibition cocurator Mazie Harris and me to reflect on her 40-year career, the Black creative support that furthered it, her creative process, and the trailblazers of the Black Arts Movement who have largely remained anonymous.

Nia Robertson: You’ve been called—and absolutely are—a trailblazer in your field. Did you feel like a trailblazer as you were navigating your career?

Barbara DuMetz: No, I certainly didn’t think of myself as a trailblazer. I was young and just doing what I loved to do. I loved being a photographer and having the freedom to work for myself. I never thought of it as something that was unusual for me to do.

When I started, the Women’s Movement was really big. In the late ’60s and early ’70s, women were breaking into fields that they hadn’t been in before, so it wasn’t just about color—it was about gender as well. For me and other women in the field, we just figured the men were going to get most of the jobs. I wasn’t around a lot of other Black women doing the type of photography I was doing. There were other women in my class at ArtCenter [College of Design, now based in Pasadena], but I was the only Black woman.

NR: The Black Arts Movement was such an influential cultural moment of Black creative and political energy. What was it like working during such a revolutionary time?

BD: It was an exciting time because we were all able to do the kind of creative work that we always wanted to do without any restriction, because there was enough of us to produce it and to expose it to the public. We were having a good time being expressive and creative and starting projects.

Along with the Black ad agencies and the magazines that were starting in the late ’60s and early ’70s, the whole film industry was opening up to hiring Black actors and producing Black films, and they were hiring more Black actors and actresses to be in commercials. I made a lot of my money working with all the new people coming into that business, on top of doing headshots for some of the up-and-coming actors and actresses.

It was revolutionary in that we got to do it. That was the revolution: doing the work, getting it out there, and finding ways to produce it.

NR: Do you have any favorites of the celebrities you’ve photographed?

BD: I don’t know if I have any favorites, but I was the main photographer for 15 years that shot all of the talent on the Lou Rawls Parade of Stars telethon. I photographed Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan, Sammy Davis Jr., Leslie Uggams, The 5th Dimension, LaMonte McLemore, Carmen McRae. Oh, just so many people. And I have all those images. I think I could probably put a big poster together with everybody on it.

NR: You were hired for the Kraft ad—which is featured in the exhibition—through one of the Black ad agencies that opened during the Black Arts Movement. Can you talk about the importance of working with other Black creatives throughout your career?

BD: You could just relax a little bit. You didn’t feel like you were being judged about your ability to do the work. We were all excited to be in our fields and working to get our images out into the world from our perspective, not from someone who didn’t have a clue about what African American life was like. So that was a lot of fun. They were also more likely to give you the job than someone who didn’t trust the fact that you could do it or felt it. Before then, it wasn’t the norm for African Americans to come in to show the general market ad agencies their work to be hired. Sometimes people thought I was the representative of the photographer, instead of the photographer.

I got a lot of jobs through word of mouth. Sometimes I’d just be in the right place at the right time to meet somebody in the industry. I ran into this young lady in the grocery store who was responsible for hiring the photographers for Toyota. She was standing behind me, and I said: “I’m selling some of my prints if you want to come by my apartment. I’m going to do a little open house.” When she came by and looked at my work, she said: “You know what? I could hire you to come and shoot the stills on the commercials.” She hired me, and I worked for Toyota doing that for three or four years.

Mazie Harris: I was so surprised that your name is on the Kraft ad.

BD: Now that was an interesting situation at the time. There was an advocacy group that said: “People don’t know that these are African American photographers shooting these ads. So let’s do something, a campaign of some sort, where we’ll put their name on the ads. Maybe we’ll do it for six months.” It didn’t last forever.

MH: How interesting to walk through the world and your work is everywhere, but you’re not known.

BD: There are so many of us—Black cinematographers, directors, art directors, graphic designers, and fashion designers—who started way back in the mid-’60s and ’70s, some even before that, during that early time when the Civil Rights Movement was demanding more Black inclusion. The story is so big. There are so many of us who are trailblazers, like you said, but nobody knows who we are.

NR: You built a set for your award-winning Coca-Cola ad. Can you talk a bit about the production required for this shoot?

BD: A lot of my work was done on a set. The art directors for the Coke ad were from the Midwest and the East Coast. Back then there were a couple of really famous photographs of kids playing in the fire hydrants in New York in front of brownstones. So that’s where they got their inspiration from. They wanted that idea of the kids in the hot summertime playing outside.

I told our director: “First of all, we don’t have red fire hydrants in California. They’re yellow, and they’re not shaped like that. And LA is not like the East Coast. There’s not a lot of brick. So let’s just create a set.”

That brick wall was the back of my studio in Hollywood on Cahuenga Boulevard. I got a set designer who found somebody to paint the Coke sign on the wall. Then the set designer built the sidewalk and stained it gray and made the fiberglass fire hydrant. There was a big utility sink at the back door of my studio, so we connected it to a hose and ran that underneath the sidewalk to hook up to the fire hydrant to run warm water so the kids could jump in without being cold. It was winter and it wasn’t hot like typical Los Angeles days.

NR: Many of your images show Black folks just doing everyday things, which was somewhat revolutionary at the time. What types of Black images did you seek to create?

BD: I would just shoot things that were natural to my environment. In a lot of street photography at the time, the images weren’t always so kind to the subjects, in my opinion. I was never really interested in doing street photography because I always felt like I was intruding in people’s personal space. Who knew what they were going through at the time, and I’m just all in their face with a camera? Nah, I’m not going to do that.

MH: Are there images that you felt drawn to or photographers who you found meaningful, then or now?

BD: My grandfather [who was a professional photographer] was my main inspiration. I loved the way he photographed portraits. He was really good at portraiture—he took pictures of us as children with my mother, father, and grandmother. And I think I’m really good at portraiture.

NR: Do you ever look back at your own works and have different takeaways now, years later?

BD: Actually, that’s how American Gothic, 1970’s Style came about. That was from a portraiture class I took during college at ArtCenter, and it was just sitting in my archives. I found it [years later] and said, “You know, this is really a good portrait of these two people, and the colors are right and the exposure’s right and the whole attitude is cool.” And then I came up with the title American Gothic because of the original 1930 Grant Wood painting American Gothic with the farmer and the pitchfork. The photographer Gordon Parks did his version in 1942, also called American Gothic, with the broom and the working lady and the flag. So I said, “I’m going to make this my American Gothic, 1970’s style because of the big Afros.”

NR: Lastly, any lessons that you want people to take away from your work or your career?

BD: If you’re interested in photography, just don’t give up. Keep at what you’re doing. There are so many ways to shoot things, so many genres in photography to explore and to find your passion in. That’s my takeaway: be tenacious.