"Photography and the Black Arts Movement" at the Getty

Jeffrey Henson Scales, In a Time of Panthers 14, Bobby Seale, Chairman of the Black Panther Party, Speaking to Media, Oakland, CA, 1969 (negative) and 2022 (print). National Gallery of Art, Washington

The Getty is hosting a large, ambitious photography show organized by the National Gallery of Art. Building on recent acquisitions by the NGA and Getty, "Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955–1985" conjoins photojournalism, agitprop, and advertising as well as photography-as-art. Its point of departure is the Black Arts Movement, a literary and political zeitgeist centering on poet, playwright, and essayist Amiri Baraka and his circle, c. 1965 to 1975. The exhibition expands that timeline to a full three decades and of course, centers on visual expression. Many of the activists, writers, and performers of the era recognized the importance of photography in crafting public personas and promoting social change. 

Anthony Barboza, Watts, Los Angeles, 1970s. Getty Museum. (c) Anthony Barboza

As shown here the result is occasionally unfocused. There's not much sense of chronology, which is after all useful for organizing historical narratives. Instead, objects are displayed according to themes so open-ended that it's hard to keep track of them. On the art-for-art's-sake side, the show has multiple inventive artists who are far from overexposed (Anthony Barboza, Adger Cowans, Louis Draper, Ming Smith, etc.) I found myself wishing their works had been displayed together. A handful of big, colorful mixed-media works tend to upstage the smaller B&W prints that are the show's core. 

Listening station

One clever bit that works is a listening station for period jazz, funk, and soul, with original album art. 

"Photography and the Black Arts Movement" is at the Getty Center through June 14, 2026. It travels to the Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, July 25–Nov. 8, 2026.

Barbara DuMetz, Kraft Foods Avertisement, 1977 (negative) and 2025 (inkjet print). Courtesy of the artist

Barbara DuMetz was one of the first Black women to achieve success in advertising photography. This image was used in an ad for Kraft's "Natural Cheese" that ran in the March 1978 issue of Ebony.

Despite the exhibition's DC-LA connection, the show has only a couple of images from the Johnson Publishing Company (Ebony, Jet) archives, now preserved by the Getty Research Institute and the Smithsonian's Museum of African American History and Culture. 

Kwame Brathwaite, Untitled (Portrait, Reels as Necklace), about 1972 (negative). National Gallery of Art

Ben Jones, Stand/Funk Elegance, 1975 (image)

Kwame Brathwaite popularized the "Black is Beautiful" catchphrase with images of elegant Black women, upending the editorial standards of white fashion. A male counterpart is Ben Jones' Stand/Funk Elegance, a 1975 screen print. Pan-African colors frame three images of dancer Larry Sanders in a soul-era paragone.

James Van Der Zee, Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1982. Dr. Kenneth Montague | The Wedge Collection, Toronto

Harlem Renaissance portraitist James Van Der Zee was 96 when he photographed 22-year-old Jean-Michel Basquiat in the latter's "best" creative year, 1982. Van Der Zee died the next year; Basquiat had only six more years. 

Barkley L. Hendricks, Self-Portrait with Red Sweater, 1980 (negative) and 2023 (print). National Gallery of Art. (c) Estate of Barkley L. Hendricks

Frank Dandridge, Martin Luther King Jr. Watches as President Lyndon B. Johnson Addresses the Events That Unfold in Selma, 1965 (negative) and 2025 (print). The LIFE Picture Collection

Harry Adams, Protest Car, 1962 (negative) and 2024 (inkjet print). Harry Adams Archive, Tom & Ethel Bradley Center at California State University, Northridge (c) Harry Adams

Ulysses Jenkins, Two Zone Transfer, 1979. Courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York

R.I.P. Ulysses Jenkins.