Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955–1985

Uniting around civil rights movements of the mid-20th century, writers, musicians, and visual artists explored how their work could celebrate Black culture and promote dignity, hope, and freedom. Their efforts to make and support art rooted in history and identity became known as the Black Arts Movement.

Photography played critical roles in both the civil rights and Black Arts movements. Across the United States and internationally, artists of the African diaspora used photographs as artistic expression, an organizing tool, and a means of building community. Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955-1985, on view February 24 through June 14, 2026, considers the many ways photography fostered Black empowerment and propelled social change.

“Photography and the Black Arts Movement brings together works by more than one hundred photographers, painters, graphic designers, and multimedia artists who used photographic images in their struggles against inequality,” says Timothy Potts, Maria Hummer-Tuttle and Robert Tuttle Director of the J. Paul Getty. “The works in this exhibition show how a wide range of artists and activists tapped the power of photography to strengthen respect for Black community and culture. Amid the turbulence of the mid-20th century, they found powerful ways of using photography to support and advance social justice.”

Divided into eight sections, this exhibition brings together more than 150 artworks in a range of media, including video art, paintings, collages, contact sheets, newsletters, and magazines, giving a sense of the varied ways that photographic imagery circulated at the time. Highlights include paintings by artists such as Frank Bowling, David Driskell, Ademola Olugebefola, and Raymond Saunders, as well as striking photographic portraits by Kwame Brathwaite, Mikki Ferrill, Barkley Hendricks, and Carla Williams, and artwork by Los Angeles icons including Harry Adams, Charles Gaines, Betye Saar, John Simmons, and Bruce Talamon. Recent Getty Museum acquisitions include works by Alvin Baltrop, Roy DeCarava, Chester Higgins, Senga Nengudi, Beuford Smith, and a listening station featuring album art and music that had a profound impact in the era.

While many images in the exhibition are joyous, also featured are depictions of violence that were circulated at the time to bring attention to racism and its effects. An installation by artist Adrian Piper, Art for the Art World Surface Pattern (1976), comments on the prevalence of such imagery, reproducing newspaper clippings documenting wars, uprisings, and natural disasters inside a small room stenciled with “NOT A PERFORMANCE” in bold red type. Inside, in a recorded monologue, the artist voices the role of a put-upon viewer, grumpy at having to contend with politics while at an art museum.

Exhibition Sections

Picturing the Self/Picturing the Movement

Self-representation and self-definition became rallying cries of the Black Arts Movement. Dignified photographic portraits and self-portraits helped inspire and prompt empathy, in contrast to mass-media representation that often demeaned or marginalized Black experience. Artists working in other mediums also incorporated photographs into their compositions, explicitly linking them to Black visual culture.

Fashioning the Self

In the mid-20th century, artists and activists used photography to reimagine Black beauty, struggle, and resistance. Photographs in magazines and newspapers showed how people throughout the African diaspora dressed, ate, rested, worked, and played, highlighting the ways in which stylistic choices reflected political concerns.

Representing the Community

In the 1960s, amid the height of civil rights movements across the African diaspora, many artists sought deeper engagement with their communities. Photography became an invaluable tool for promoting self-determination through self-representation. By capturing nuanced portrayals of everyday life, photographers fostered a sense of pride and offered a powerful counterpoint to negative portrayals that were commonplace in American and international media.

About Looking

Attuned to both the beauty and challenges of everyday life, artists associated with the Black Arts Movement were committed to creating work that invited contemplation and fostered connection. Photographers employed a range of techniques to convey their lived experiences and center Black subjects. Looking to shadows and dark tonalities as a rich form of expression, they composed disorienting images of familiar rights to encourage new perspectives.

Activism

Activists leading civil rights movements in the 1960s and 1970s realized that photographic documentation was essential to garner public support. Community organizers and field photographers took to the streets, camera in hand, determined to show the physical and psychological toll of racism and to challenge white supremacy. Black empowerment imagery shared around the world shaped conversations about civil rights struggles in the United States and throughout the African diaspora.

In the News

Images of the US civil rights movement entered millions of homes around the world in the 1960s and 1970s through newspapers, magazines, and television. Artists tapped the persuasive power of photography, creating works that sparked empathy, swayed public opinion, and put pressure on governments to act. Activist leaders brandished photographs, posters, and news film as organizing tools. Along with magazines like Life, Ebony, and Jet, network news programs extended coverage of the civil rights movement.

Transformation in Art and Culture

Artists developed a range of strategies to respond to the social, cultural, and economic upheavals that defined the period between 1955 and 1985. Photographers crafted compositions that invited sustained attention to contemporary events while evoking the power of historical memory and Pan-African heritage. By working with popular formats such as magazine imagery and video, artists claimed control over mass-media narratives. This work also fostered the emergence of artist-directed alternative spaces that served as vital gathering places, bypassing gatekeepers who had marginalized Black artistry.

California Connections

In the mid-20th century, Southern California was fractured by racial violence, restrictive housing policies, and school segregation. Artists responded by forging relationships, nurturing a vibrant art scene amid the region’s sprawl. This section—unique to the Los Angeles iteration of the exhibition—highlights the work and networks that contributed to Southern California’s role in the Black Arts Movement. The exhibition concludes with photographs that celebrate the Black Photographers of California and the Black Gallery, founded in Crenshaw in 1984 to promote, present, and preserve the work of established and emerging Southern California photographers of color.

Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955-1985 is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington. Curated by Philip Brookman, consulting curator of photographs at the National Gallery of Art, and Deborah Willis, university professor and chair of the department of photography and imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts and director of the Center for Black Visual Culture at New York University. The exhibition has been overseen in Los Angeles by Mazie Harris, Associate Curator in the Getty Museum Department of Photographs.

On the occasion of the opening of the exhibition, from 5-6pm on Tuesday, February 24th, join artists and featured guests in the exhibition galleries for discussion about artworks in the show. Immediately following, at 6:30pm the Getty Research Institute will screen Horace Tapscott: Musical Griot (2017) a documentary by Barbara McCullough, whose pioneering work in film is represented by two earlier pieces in Photography and the Black Arts Movement. She will be joined in conversation by Kristin Juarez, senior research specialist for the African American Art History Initiative at the Getty Research Institute. Additional programs to be announced soon.

In honor of Black History Month, we invite you to check out more exciting programs coming up. Variations on a Theme: Benjamin Patterson’s Scores, an evening exploring the art and legacy of Benjamin Patterson, a groundbreaking experimental artist of sound and performance. The program features live performances of early works like String Music and Paper Piece, highlighting Patterson’s blend of classical training and experimental spirit. Also, part of our lineup is Sounds of LA: Jimetta Rose & the Voices of Creation, a powerful performance in our Sounds of LA series. Blending gospel choir traditions with jazz, soul, and funk, the group creates joyful, healing experiences through collective sound.