The Long Journey Forward: Black Photographers To Celebrate Black Manhood At Wilmer Jennings Gallery

Photos: Melvin McCray Curators Howard Cash and Jamel Shabazz have assembled an intergenerational collection of black photographers to celebrate Black manhood at the Wilmer Jennings Gallery at Kenkeleba House on the Lower Eastside. “This exhibition uses photography as a global language to bring us together as one in a time when we are so divided as a society,” said Shabazz at the exhibit’s opening. “When I think about the conditions of Black men in this country and how images have been utilized to dehumanize, it was important to bring about images that show Black men in a very dignified way.”  The exhibition features forty-four black photographers, including up-and-coming artists like Kay Hickman and Lamar Metcalf and more established artists like Leroy Henderson and Laylah Amutallah Barrayn. It also salutes the late great Kwame Brathwaite, who was instrumental in creating the Black is beautiful movement of the 1960s. “We can use the camera as a weapon like Gordon did, a choice of weapons to change the narrative,” said Shabazz, referring to photographer Gordon Parks’ celebrated novel. Melvin McCray, a photographer and former ABC News broadcast journalist, uses QR codes that, when scanned, open up videos to give the gallery goer an...