The photographers of the Kamoinge Workshop, whose work appears in a new exhibition at the VMFA (Photo by Anthony Barboza)
The late photographer Louis H. Draper, a Henrico County native who moved to New York in 1957 and founded the Kamoinge Workshop to support and further the efforts of black photographers, is receiving his first museum-level exhibition at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, on view through June 14.
“Working Together: Louis Draper and the Kamoinge Workshop” is organized by curator Sarah L. Eckhardt, who has written about the founding of Kamoinge, which in Gikuyu, the language of the Kikuyu in Kenya, means “a group of people acting and working together.” Kamoinge, which is still active, evolved into what is regarded as the nation’s longest operating nonprofit photography collective. The exhibition features 180 photographs by 15 of the early members of the Kamoinge Workshop.
Draper grew up in Henrico, just over the city’s eastern boundary, and majored in history and journalism at Virginia State College (now university), the historically black college in Petersburg. He began writing and taking pictures for the school paper, and his father, who was fond of photography himself, eagerly sent him a camera. “I felt obligated to learn how to use it,” Draper recalled in a later interview for Exposure magazine.
This untitled photograph by Louis Draper is part of “Working Together,” an exhibition of work by the Kamoinge Workshop on view at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts through June 14. (Photo by Louis Draper)
Then came a revelation: Someone left on his bed the catalog for the 1955 Edward Steichen photography exhibition “The Family of Man” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. And that began Draper’s “photography education.” He recalled, “I read it practically all night instead of studying for my exam.”
Draper, who was a senior, left school to pursue photography in New York. “That was the only thing that mattered to me,” he said. In New York, he stayed in a rooming house managed by the Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes.
A year after Steichen’s exhibition came the collaboration between Hughes and Roy DeCarava, “The Sweet Flypaper of Life,” which documents 1950s Harlem in photography and poetry. The book is on display in the exhibition: DeCarava became Kamoinge’s first president.
The exhibition could have focused on Draper alone, due to the volume of his work, but “Kamoinge, though, is strongly associated with his identity as a photographer,” Eckhardt says.
“His political identity formed [in Richmond],” she explains. “His artistic identity formed in New York. He was coming into photography when Richmond was the center for Massive Resistance.”
The exhibition includes copies of the Black Photographers Annual, published by Kamoinge from 1973 to 1980 as a way to promote the work of its members and others, as well as photographs that were included in the volumes.
“Working Together” covers Kamoinge’s first 20 years (1963 through 1983) and includes street photography, portraits of political and celebrity figures, and more.
In 1982, Draper became a full-time instructor at Mercer County Community College in New Jersey. “That’s another chapter,” Eckhardt says. “He was a beloved teacher.”
After a lifetime of photography, organizing, advocacy and education, Draper’s 2002 death left behind a trove of images and negatives, documents and ephemera that went into the care of his younger sister Nell Draper-Winston. Eckhardt became aware of Draper in 2012 when Draper-Winston brought a selection of photographs and related materials to the VMFA. In 2015, VMFA acquired the entire Draper archive. Archivist Courtney Tkacz led a project to catalog and digitize the papers and images, which are now available on VMFA’s website. Significant supplementary documentation came from Draper’s Kamoinge colleagues Shawn Walker, Beuford Smith, Herb Robinson and Tony Barboza.
“When we were putting this together, and writing the book, I might be nervous calling somebody, and I’d tell them this was about Louis Draper, and they’d say, ‘For Lou? I’d do anything for Lou,’ ” Eckhardt recalls. “He seems to have been a quiet, intense and naturally nurturing person.
“Wherever Lou went, he organized communities. He couldn’t help himself.”