Working Together: The Photographers of the Kamoinge Workshop is an exhibition featuring over 150 photographs by fourteen early members of the Kamoinge Workshop, nine of whom are living and working today. In 1963 a group of Black photographers based in New York came together in the spirit of friendship and exchange and chose the name Kamoinge—meaning “a group of people acting together” in Gikuyu, the language of the Kikuyu people of Kenya—to reflect the essential ideal of the collective. Focusing on the first two decades of the collective (1963–1983), Working Together celebrates the Kamoinge Workshop’s important place in the history of photography and foregrounds the collective’s deep commitment to photography’s power and status as an independent art form. The exhibition is organized by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) and was curated by Dr. Sarah Eckhardt, associate curator of modern and contemporary art.
Though each member of the Workshop developed a unique aesthetic approach and an independent photography career, they shared a perspective echoed in founding member Louis Draper’s statement: “we speak of our lives as only we can.” Highlighting the artists’ distinct visual voices as well as their collective concerns, Working Together primarily includes works from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts as well as a selection of photographs unique to the Whitney’s presentation, many of which were recently acquired for the Whitney’s permanent collection. These works, as well as archival materials, foreground the achievements of fourteen early members who joined the collective between 1963 and 1972: Anthony Barboza, Adger Cowans, Daniel Dawson, Louis Draper, Al Fennar, Ray Francis, Herman Howard, Jimmie Mannas, Herb Randall, Herb Robinson, Beuford Smith, Ming Smith, Shawn Walker, and Calvin Wilson.
