This guide will help you find books and other materials at the San Francisco Public Library related to the topic of the images of African Americans as seen through the camera lens. If you need further help finding materials, be sure to ask the librarian staff for guidance. You can pick up a copy of this bibliography at the Museum of the African Diaspora. Materials can be found throughout the SFPL’s 27 branches as well as at the Main Library. You will especially want to check out the African American Center on the third floor of the Main Library as well as the Bayview Branch Library.
Click here for printer-friendly PDF version (PDF 167K)
- The African Americans
-
In strong color photographs, this celebration of black achievement portrays educators, politicians, preachers, and numerous other figures, offering brief biographies detailing their claims to fame. With both contemporary and historical profiles, this volume includes ordinary people who have made significant contributions to society interspersed with well-known artists, filmmakers, movie stars, and authors.
973.1496 Af825 - African American vernacular photography: selections from the Daniel Cowin Collection
-
These selections from the Daniel Cowin Collection make up an extraordinary group of images of African Americans in a variety of genres and poses, including formal studio portraits, casual snapshots, images of children, images of uniformed soldiers, wedding portraits and so-called "Southern-views" made for tourist consumption, all dating from 1860 to 1960.
779.9973 Af834 - Black America: A photographic journey: past to present
-
Lavishly illustrated with a unique collection of archive photographs and other material, Black America charts the progress of Black Americans from their earliest days in the Caribbean to the plantations of the Deep South. The book covers their role in society and their culture and follows their mixed fortunes through the Civil War and Reconstruction.
973.0496 Sm622b - Black artists in photography 1840-1940
-
Surveys the work of African-American professional photographers from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century: Jules Lion, Augustus Washington, James P. Ball, the Goodridge Brothers, Cornelius M. Battey, and Addison Scurlock.
J770.922 Sull - The black female body: a photographic history
-
The Black Female Body offers a stunning array of familiar and many virtually unknown photographs, showing how photographs reflect and reinforce Western culture's fascination with black women's bodies. 185 photos.
779.2408 W6792b - Black genesis: African roots : a voyage from Juffure, the Gambia, through Mandingo country to the slave port of Dakar, Senegal
-
966.51 V886b
- Carrie Mae Weems: the Hampton Project
-
Lavishly illustrated with a unique collection of archive photographs and other material, Black America charts the progress of Black Americans from their earliest days in the Caribbean to the plantations of the Deep South. The book covers their role in society and their culture and follows their mixed fortunes through the Civil War and Reconstruction.
973.0496 Sm622b - A Century of black photographers, 1840-1960
-
REF 779 ZC3332
- Committed to the image: contemporary black photographers
-
Committed to the Image, represents a far-ranging exploration of contemporary African American identity.
779.0899 C737 - Enterprising images: the Goodridge Brothers African American photographers 1847-1922
-
In Enterprising Images, John Vincent Jezierski tells the story of one of America's first families of photography, documenting the history of the Goodridge studio for three-quarters of a century. The existence of more than one thousand Goodridge photographs in all formats (daguerreotypes to motion pictures) and the family's professional and personal activism enrich the portrait that emerges of this extraordinary familyn.
973.0496 Sm622b - From auction block to glory
-
This volume explores the multifaceted experience of African Americans during the war.
973.71 T798F - The Hampton album; 44 photographs from an album of Hampton Institute
-
378.75 J643h
- Hidden witness : African-American images from the birth of photography to the Civil War
-
779.9973 W418p
- The historic photographs of Addison N. Scurlock : June 19-August 29, 1976, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
-
Catalog of the Corcoran exhibition. Addison Scurlock was the premier photographer in Washington for half a century, who documented how elite black Washintonians lived in the early 1900’s.
REF 779.1 Scu48h - The homoerotic photography of Carl Van Vechten : public face, private thoughts
-
A white supporter of the Harlem Renaissance, Van Vechten was a portrait photographer as well as the author of popular novels and criticism, and is very much worthy of rediscovery today. The departure point for this incisive volume is a series of nude, interracial, homoerotic photographs that Van Vechten took in the 1930s and '40s (unsealed by Yale's Beinecke archives in 1989).
770.92 V375S - In our own image: treasured African-American traditions, journeys, and icons
-
A visual document of black social and cultural history in America from World War II to the present, "In Our Own Image" is also a fascinating scrapbook that recounts simple, eloquent stories about home life, family reunions, worship, weddings, funerals, barbecues, and barber shops.
973.0496 B2933i - J.P. Ball, daguerrean and studio photographer
-
This thrilling volume not only brings to light an important chapter in African-American history, but it brings long-overdue recognition to Ball (1825-1904), the 19th-century African-American photographer who in his day was regarded as one of the best photographers in America.
770.92 B21w - James Van DerZee: the picture-takin' man
-
770.92 V286h 1991
- Legacy: treasures of Black history
-
A selection of writings, quotes, maps, images, documents, and artifacts are highlighted, covering themes of the African diaspora, the slave trade and enslavement, the antebellum period, abolitionism, the Civil War and afterwards, the Jim Crow period, the New Negro, civil rights, the Black Arts Movement, and black leadership.
973.0496 L5223 - Lorna Simpson
-
779.1 Si58w
- The majesty of the Black woman
-
779.24 T2195m
- One more river to cross: an African American photograph album
-
This intimate collection of photographs documents the African-American experience and celebrates the courageous achievements of men and women whose defiant rejection of inequality and subjugation put their own lives at risk.
973.0496 M992o - Picturing us: African American identity in photography
-
Picturing Us brings together a diverse group of African American writers, scholars and filmmakers in the first concerted effort to analyze and respond to the photographic image of blacks throughout history.
770.8996 P589 - Photography on the color line: W.E.B. Du Bois, race and visual culture
-
Through a rich interpretation of the remarkable photographs W. E. B. Du Bois compiled for the American Negro Exhibit at the 1900 Paris Exposition, Shawn Michelle Smith reveals the visual dimension of the color line that Du Bois famously called "the problem of the twentieth century." Du Bois' prize-winning exhibit consisted of three albums together containing 363 black-and-white photographs, mostly of middle-class African Americans from Atlanta and other parts of Georgia.
770.8996 Sm65p - Reflections in Black: a history of black photographers 1840 to the present
-
A curator of photography at the Smithsonian Institution has selected nearly 600 stunning images that present rich and moving glimpses of black life, from slavery to the 1990s middle-class families.
770.8996 W679r - Some time ago: A historical portrait of Black Americans from 1850-1950
-
325.26 So1
- A True likeness: the black South of Richard Samuel Roberts, 1920–1936
-
Those unfamiliar with the South of the 1920s and 1930s are unaware that there was a flourishing black middle-class in the southern cities. Here, captured by Roberts's camera, is ample evidence of its existence.
REF 779 R543t - Without Sanctuary: lynching photography in America
-
These images are some of photography's most brutal, surviving to this day so that we may now look back on the terrorism unleashed on America's African-American community and perhaps know our history and ourselves better. The almost one hundred images reproduced here are a testament to the camera's ability to make us remember what we often choose to forget.
364.134 W777 - The world of James Van DerZee: a visual record of Black Americans
-
779 V286w
- Black genesis: a resource book for African American genealogy
-
Black Genesis: A Resource Book For African-American Genealogy is a straightforward listing of resources especially pertinent to African-American genealogical research.
REF 929.1 R72b - Finding a place called home: a guide to African-American genealogy and historical identity
-
An African-American Guide to Genealogy and Historical Identity takes us back, step-by-step, including: Methods of searching and interpreting records, such as marriage, birth, and death certificates, census reports, slave schedules, church records, and Freedmen's Bureau information. Interviewing and taking inventory of family members using the Internet for genealogical purposes. Information on tracing Caribbean ancestry.
929.1089 W868F - Photographing your heritage
-
Photographing documents in a library, reading gravestones in a cemetery, copying photographs, and many other useful techniques are fully explained by the author.
778.92 Sh92p - Scrapbooking your family history
-
In Scrapbooking Your Family History, you'll also find advice on researching your heritage and ideas for creating memory albums that pay tribute your family’s heritage.
745.593 B4645s - Uncovering your ancestry through family photographs
-
Everyone keeps old family photographs, whether in frames, albums or shoe boxes. These photos house a treasury of genealogical information, revealing unique details about our ancestors' lives, personalities and everyday realities. Following this guide's step-by-step instruction, anyone can learn how to identify different types of family photographs to determine their date, location, and in some instances, their photographer.
929.1072 T216u - African American photographers - History - 19th century
- African American photographers - Exhibitions
- African Americans - Pictorial works
- African Americans - Portraits
- African Americans Genealogy
- Genealogy - Methodology
GENEALOGY:
FOR MORE INFORMATION ON ANY SUBJECT LISTED HERE, CHECK THE SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC LIBRARY CATALOG FOR THE FOLLOWING SUBJECTS OR ASK A LIBRARIAN FOR FURTHER RESEARCH HELP:
KEYWORD SEARCHES:
