Ace, New York

Louis Draper took this photograph in Harlem, New York, during the height of the civil rights era. A founding member of the Kamoinge Workshop, a collective of New York-based Black photographers, Draper focused on photographing Black people both in New York and Mississippi.

“Among the things I found out about myself,” explained Draper, “was that I had an interest in people and that I was intrigued by the varying moods of and complexities of light. I also came to realize that there were things about this world that I hated and that these too were valid statements to be made with a camera. I hated injustice … Most of all, I began to understand that what I felt had worth; that I could make strong statements about the world in visual terms and that often these images did in fact move people emotionally. I had power. I was a force.”