On Exhibit: Let Your Motto Be Resistance

W.E.B. Du Bois, 1911, Gelatin silver print

American history is retold through the photographic portraits of celebrated African Americans in "Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraits" on view at the International Center of Photography (1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street), from May 11 through September 9, 2007.

Frederick Douglass, 1856

Teacher, preacher, editor, and abolitionist, Henry Highland Garnet (not pictured) was an unwavering advocate for racial equality and an electrifying speaker in support of that campaign before and after the Civil War.

Sojourner Truth, 1870

At the 1843 National Negro Convention in Albany, N.Y., Garnet unleashed a rallying cry, urging “the slaves of the United States of America” to rise up and emancipate themselves: “Let your Motto be resistance! Resistance! RESISTANCE! No opposed people have ever secured Liberty without resistance.”

Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, 1935

This collection of photographs traces 150 years of American history through the lives of well-known abolitionists, artists, scientists, writers, statesmen, entertainers, and sports figures.

Langston Hughes, 1932, Gelatin silver print

The exhibition explores ways the sitters collaborated with photographers to create positive images and challenge demeaning stereotypes, and in the process shows how people demonstrated their “resistance” to the predominantly negative representations of African Americans circulating in American mainstream culture.

Ethel Waters, 1939

“As we examined the photographs that comprise this exhibition,” states National Museum of African American History and Culture Director Lonnie G. Bunch III, “it was clear that they revealed, reflected, and illuminated the variety of creative and courageous ways that African Americans resisted, accommodated, redefined, and struggled in an America that needed but rarely embraced and accepted its black citizens.”

Malcolm X, 1963

Resistance took many forms. Working with a growing circle of African American intellectuals and professionals, photographers often presented their sitters in idealized settings. Images of African Americans in dignified dress, surrounded by symbols of culture, challenged the prevailing view of blacks as intellectually and socially inferior.

Wynton Marsalis, 2004

In addition, portraits of entertainers such as Billie Holiday, Nat “King” Cole, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, and Richard Pryor show how celebrating African American culture can be an equally effective way to call into question racist notions, and to empower a community to resist them.

Lorraine Hansberry, 1960

Exhibition highlights include an 1856 ambrotype of Frederick Douglass; Berenice Abbott’s 1926 photograph of poet Claude McKay; P.H. Polk’s portrait of scientist George Washington Carver (c. 1930); Arnold Eagle’s image of Gordon Parks from 1945; Linda McCartney’s 1967 portrait of Jimi Hendrix; and Irving Penn’s 1983 image of opera singer Jessye Norman.

Gordon Parks, 1945

The life of Gordon Parks is emblematic of the societal changes and political climate in the United States during the middle of the twentieth century. He was the first black photographer hired by the Farm Security Administration and by Life magazine, and was the first black director to make a movie for a major Hollywood studio. More On The Exhibit Visit ICP