The cover of Kwame Brathwaite: Black Is Beautiful by by Kwame Brathwaite, Tanisha C. Ford and Deborah Willis, 2019

Kwame Brathwaite Showed the World that Black is Beautiful

Photographing everyone from musicians to athletes to the person on the street, Brathwaite found the beauty in Blackness and shared it with the world.
American painter, photographer, writer, and film director William Klein, c. 1968

The Confounding Career of William Klein

The American artist brought the physical world into fashion photography in ways that were often unappreciated or unpredictable.
Alphonse Bertillon, first head of the Forensic Identification Service of the Prefecture de Police in Paris (1893).

The Origins of the Mug Shot

US police departments began taking photographs of people they arrested in the 1850s.
A hand holding a trading card featuring Ruby Dee

How Trading Card Collectors Have Fought Stereotypes

By making what may have been unseen visible, trading cards have often provided an opening into larger conversations on race, gender, and representation.
from Suite Vénitienne by Sophie Calle

Love, Obsession, and Sophie Calle

The conceptual artist Sophie Calle creates art that urges us to ask, is attention the same as love?
David Hockney

Why David Hockney Makes Both Paintings and Photographs

In a 1991 interview with singer Graham Nash, David Hockney explained how he applied his drawing skills to photography via the computer.
Michelle Dean

Michelle Dean: A Sharp Look at Criticism by Women

Dean on the obstacles women face in being taken seriously as intellectuals, feminist infighting, and the importance of being an outsider.
Zines

Before Blogs, There Were Zines

Zines haven't completely disappeared in the internet age, but the photocopier-powered DIY publishing phenomenon has certainly entered history by now.
John Berger

John Berger, 1926-2017

John Berger has died at the age of 90. Famous for his television series and book Ways of Seeing, he was a critic, artist, novelist, poet, and radical.
Philando Castile shooting video

How Do I (Not) Look? Live Feed Video and Viral Black Death

When we have the choice to look, we are bound ethically and politically to what we witness and what we do with what we have seen.