Picturing Black History: Photographs and Stories that Changed the World

A groundbreaking collection of photographs and essays that shed new light on the history of Black America, from the Picturing Black History project. “An astonishing work." —Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Picturing Black History uncovers untold stories and rarely seen images of the Black experience, providing new context around culturally significant moments. This beautiful collectible volume makes a thoughtful gift and is full of rousing, vibrant essays paired with rarely seen photographs that expand our understanding of Black history.

The book is a collaborative effort between Getty Images, Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, and the History departments at The Ohio State and Miami Universities. It informs, educates, and inspires our current moment by exploring the past, blending the breadth and depth of Getty Images’s archives with the renowned expertise of Origins contributors and The Ohio State’s and Miami’s History departments, including Daniela Edmeier, Damarius Johnson, Nicholas Breyfogle, and Steve Conn.

Created by a growing collective of professional historians, art historians, Black Studies scholars, and photographers and showcasing Getty Images’s unmatched collection of photographs, Picturing Black History embraces the power of visual storytelling to relay little-known stories of oppression and resistance, perseverance and resilience, freedom, dreams, imagination, and joy within the United States and around the world.

In collecting these new photographic essays, this book furthers an ongoing dialogue on the significance of Black history and Black life, sharing new perspectives on the current status of prejudice and discrimination bias with a wider audience. Picturing Black History uses the latest academic learning and scholarship to recontextualize and dispel prejudices, while uncovering, digitizing, and preserving new archival materials to amplify a more inclusive visual landscape.