Colony Little, Culture Shock Art

I’ve spent the better part of this rainy week devoting time in the Artist a Day series to the incredible black and white photography created by artists in the Kamoinge Workshop; one common thread among them is that many were represented by the now shuttered Steven Kasher Gallery in New York. Kasher wound down his 25 year practice to join David Zwirner, and while the news isn’t much of a shock for those who have been following the perilous travails of the mid-size gallery in recent years, it is sad considering that he represented a significant portion of photographers who came up through Kamoinge’s collaborative tutelage.

In an interview that Kasher gave to artnet late last year, the gallerist noted that one of his proudest achievements was the fact the work created by artists he represented found their way into the collections of museums. Read more on the gallery’s closure here.

Back to the Artist of the Day: Louis Draper was another founding member of Kamoinge who originally hailed from Virginia whose portraits and images of black life have been called his form of “engaged reisistance”.

The Virginia Museum of Fine Art has stood out as an institution that catalogued and highlighted the work of Kamoinge photographers, and in 2016 the museum acquired 35 of Draper’s works in addition to his entire archive of papers, equipment and negatives. In 2018 the VMFA received a Bank of America conservation grant to preserve and digitize the important work of the Kamoinge Workshop.