TAWA at 45
The Exhibition
Louis Draper
Soccer Game, Dakar, Senegal
gelatin silver print, 1978; 14″h x 17″w; Collection of Aubrey J Kauffman
Louis Draper (1935-2002) was a New York-based American photographer known for his images of Harlem in the 1960s. Draper and a fellow photographer Ray Francis were founding members of the Kamoinge Workshop which means “group effort” from the language of the Kikuyu people of Kenya. The Kamoinge Workshop grew to include fellow artists Anthony Barboza, Adjer Cowans, Danny Dawson, Al Fennar, Herman Howard, Earl James, Jimmy Mannas, Herbert Randall, Herb Robinson, Beuford Smith, Ming Smith, Larry Stewart, Shawn Walker, and Calvin Wilson.
Draper was originally from Virginia and moved to Harlem, New York in 1957. He enrolled at the New York Institute of Photography where he took workshops with Harold Feinstein and W. Eugene Smith. He developed a passion for street photography that used a high standard for photographic printmaking. In 1982, Draper started teaching at Mercer County Community College. In 1990, Draper as one of a six artist to go to the Soviet Union as part of an exchange program of artists and exhibitions. There Draper had a chance to meet Russian artists and was able to create a portfolio of photographs that was taken during his travels in the USSR.
Of his own photographs, Draper wrote: “I want to show the strength, the wisdom, the dignity of the Negro people… I do not want a documentary or sociological statement, I want a creative expression, the kind of penetrating insight and understanding of Negros which I believe only a Negro photographer can interpret.”