THE WHITE LINE

The Kamoinge Workshop collective was formed in 1963 by a group of young African-American photographers working in New York, who wanted to share experiences and offer mutual support. The word “kamoinge” comes from the Kenyan Kikuyu language and means “a group of people acting together”. The original members included Roy DeCarava, who was the group’s first director. Ming Smith joined a few years later. For a long time, she was the only woman photographer in the collective, which is still active today. The screen presents a selection of images by these two photographers in the Moderna Museet Collection.

Roy DeCarava grew up in Harlem, New York City, and started photographing in the late 1940s, after working in painting and making prints. With his camera, he created sensitive portrayals of life in his neighbourhood. Often with soft, dark tones in his analogue gelatin silver prints. Although his works were never explicit political, he had a strong ambition to show the city’s black inhabitants in a new, respectful way. His oeuvre includes portraits of many of the great jazz musicians. DeCarava taught for several years and mentored many young photographers.

The photographer Ming Smith was born in Detroit, Michigan, and has been active since the early 1970s. Her career took off when her photographs were published in The Black Photographers Annual. She is celebrated for her informal, expressive portraits of cultural luminaries, from Alvin Ailey to Nina Simone and many jazz musicians. Smith is also famous for her painterly street pictures in colour and black and white. Early in her practice, she engaged with difficult conditions of weak light and created her pictures in the development stage, experimenting with different post-printing processes. Her photographs are included in several American museum collections, and the book Ming Smith: An Aperture Monograph was published in 2020.