Photographer's memory

1982, Sharon Farmer was dragging photographic equipment on Ana Costia street in southeast Washington. It was Anna Costia Park Community Day, and people sang loudly from the speakers overhead. She was happy to see the bustling neighborhood where she grew up and took a landmark photo. The oldest museum of black culture in America opens in the living room. Three things to understand: the black and white images of buffalo soldiers show the scene of strong community strength and energy among young people; The crowded crowd radiated to the audience. "It surprised me," said Farmer, who was the first African-American woman employed by Clinton as an official White House photographer. Now she wants to know where these young people are. "Has anyone become an artist?" While meditating, she studied the photos now hanging in the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Her photo is one of 169 photos displayed in the museum's first special exhibition. "More than one photo." A year after Smithsonian staff began to install cultural relics, this exhibition has just opened. It is just an experience of its huge photographic collection, including more than 25,000 photos.

"The photos are very meaningful. They are stories. They are memories, "said curator Mitchell Gates Moresi. "They are visual connections with our past, present and future generations."

The exhibition follows the spirit of an exhibition entitled "African American Exhibition" created by W.E.B. Du Powysfor, an African American writer and activist, for the 1900 Paris Expo, aiming at telling the story of African Americans in the post-slavery period through photography. The play uses thoughtful labels to explain the background and history, trying to examine every corner of African-American life from slavery to the present. "There are joys and struggles," Ronnie Bang Qi, director of the museum, said in the exhibition.

Fighting for Freedom: The fifth volume of the National Museum of African-American History and Culture (Double Exposure) series shows 50 photos of African-Americans in uniform, from the Civil War to the Iraq War. Frank Bolden Jr, the 12 director of NASA, and Gail Lumet Buckley, the author of American Patriot, have enriched the selection of these photos, which show stories of patriotism, courage and dignity. The famous Sojourner Truth, Marquez and Michael Jordan Company depict the images of ordinary people who live a habitual life.

This contrast fascinated the audience. At one end of the gallery, a naughty portrait of quen latifah comes from her hip-hop star era in 1990s, smiling shyly. At the other end, the oldest photo in the exhibition depicts a group of enslaved women and their children posing quietly in a plantation near Alexandria, Virginia.

"What we want to ask is how photography reflects a person's identity," said Aaron Bryant, curator of photography and visual culture at the museum.

Photographers represent many well-known and emerging photographers. The works of john wyatt, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer, and Ernest Withers, a civil rights photojournalist, support the equally amazing works of lesser-known emerging photographers such as Devon Allen and Zun Lee.

Amateur photographer Allen took photos of Ferguson's activities on 20 15, but his eye-catching photos appeared on the cover of Time magazine. From 20 1 1 to 20 15, Kai-fu Lee, a doctor in Toronto, recorded what he thought was neglected about black fatherly love. The photo follows my father in the northeast.