The Photographer: Kwame Brathwaite and the African Jazz Arts Society & Studios

In 1956, Kwame Brathwaite and his older brother, Elombe Brath, with Jimmy Abu, Frank Adu, Bob Gumbs, and Chris Acemandese Hall, founded the African Jazz Arts Society and Studios (AJASS). 

Based in Harlem, the AJASS had a hand in every aspect of black life from politics and social activism to the arts. Brathwaite, however, is best known for his photographs of American life, specifically celebrating the beauty and activism of the black from AJASS’s base in Harlem. The AJASS launched the Grandassa Models to greater Harlem through a show, Natural 62, at the Purple Manor at 65 East 125th Street, with Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach performing. These fashion shows and model photoshoots generated some of the early photographs that made Brathwaite famous. He captured the range of beauty in the black community which included black models with natural hair and dark skin, an appreciation that was missing in the mainstream images controlled by white America. 

Throughout his long, storied career, with a base at the AJASS on 125th Street in Harlem and residing for a time with his wife, Shirley, on Fifth Avenue between 106 and 107th, Brathwaite photographed street scenes; stories for numerous papers including the Amsterdam News; and concert photos and black luminaries around the world.

Brathwaite died in 2023 but his legacy lives on. Brathwaite’s photos are in the permanent collection of the Studio Museum in Harlem, and, in addition to the many exhibitions of his work that show around the country. In 2022, documentary filmmaker and host of the long-running public television show “Cultural Caravan,” Louise Dente, chronicled the history of the African Jazz Arts Society and Studios in  AJASS: Pioneers of the Black is Beautiful Movement. 

In 2025, Yemi Bamiro directed a documentary devoted to Mr. Brathwaite and his work, Black Is Beautiful: The Kwame Brathwaite Story. Maysles Cinema on Lenox Avenue at 127th will be showing the film on February 26th as part of its Black History Month series followed by a Q&A with Brathwaite’s son.

(Maysles Cinema also showed the Dente documentary so keep your eye on their listings!)

ER/KD