Due to this app’s (seemingly impending) demise, slide — IG: https://t.co/UTN2BxFMX3. We buildin’ ova there.

When asked to summarize his life's work at one of his last public events, Brathwaite poignantly stated, "I love Black people."

By the 1970s, he was the top photographer of Black musicians and athletes, shaping the public image of figures like Stevie Wonder, Bob Marley and Muhammad Ali. He also covered major Black cultural events like the Motown Revue and African festivals.

Brathwaite was instrumental in staging the aesthetic of Black Power through his uplifting images published in Black magazines and newspapers.

Brathwaite organized fashion shows through AJASS showcasing diverse representations of Black beauty on a national scale. By tagging the shows with "Black is Beautiful," Brathwaite sparked a then national movement to encourage Black pride.

Throughout the early 1960s, Brathwaite became the center of his most impactful project — his "Black is Beautiful" series. The series portrayed Black men and women embracing their natural hair and features, directly challenging Eurocentric beauty ideals.

This immersed him in the world of Marcus Garvey and other cultural revolutionaries who combatted racism and prejudice by promoting Black culture and identity.

He started photographing AJASS events, shifting his lens to capture Black artists and activists involved in the civil rights movement.

In the late 1950s, Brathwaite co-founded the African Jazz Art Society & Studios (AJASS) with his brother Elombe to celebrate African and African American culture.

Born in Brooklyn, New York to a family of artists and musicians, Brathwaite originally envisioned himself becoming a graphic designer; however after witnessing the disturbing images of Emmett Till in 1955, he decided to make a pivot and selected photography as his medium.

Kwame Brathwaite (b. 1938) was a pioneering photographer and activist who dedicated his career to promoting Black pride and empowerment.

Kwame Brathwaite, "Untitled (Sikolo with Carolee Prince Designs)," 1968. Celebrating Kwame Brathwaite. A thread.🧵

Due to this app’s (seemingly impending) demise, slide — IG: https://t.co/UTN2BxFf7v. We buildin’ ova there.

The works' legacy powerfully lives on as it continues to resonate with audiences and spur dialogue around Black pride and nationhood.

As one of his most famous pieces, the former demonstrated Hammons’ ability to boldly explore racial representation and African American identity through iconic imagery and materials while the latter reaffirms those feelings nearly thirty years later.

Today, "African American Flag" and Hammons' 2017 adaptation, "Oh Say Can You See" (2017) remain seminal pieces of political art and social commentary.

In doing so, "African American Flag" takes a commonplace item imbued with cultural meanings and reconstitutes it to reconsider notions of identity and belonging.

A Dadaist, Hammons' gesture of altering the national emblem of America allowed him to utilize and manipulate a readymade object to disrupt its original ingrained assumptions.

By Pan-Africanizing the American flag, Hammons aimed to challenge notions of nationalism and expose the hypocrisy of America’s professed ideals of freedom and equality.

He replaces the flag’s traditional red, white and blue with the Pan-African colors of red, black and green — symbolically representing the blood shed during slavery, the skin and pride of African Americans, and the wealth and prosperity stolen from their ancestors, respectively.