The Black Photographers Annual 1973. With a Foreword by Toni Morrison and an Introduction by Clayton Riley. CRAWFORD, Joe (ed.), & others.

First edition of the first volume, a monumental document of Black photography. It contains "some of the most powerful and poignant photography I have ever seen", writes Toni Morrison in her foreword. Images of Civil Rights protests share space with candid snapshots of kitchen tables, scenes of music and celebration, and sombre portraits of grief: "the flow of human rhythms, staccato heart-beats, hands frozen into gestures of exalted and vulgar expression", writes Clayton Riley in his introduction. "In the new time, in the new space we begin to occupy, we are seeing and hearing ourselves, seeing ourselves as possessors of beauty". Four volumes of the anthology were published in close collaboration with the Kamoinge Workshop, a collective of Black photographers renowned for their commitment to excellence. This first volume is considered the most important. It includes, among many other exceptional works, the first published photographs by Ming Smith, who at the time had been taking pictures for less than a year. She went on to become the first African-American female photographer whose work was acquired by New York City's Museum of Modern Art. Quarto. With black and white photographic images through out by Roy DeCarava, James Van DerZee, Vance Allen, Daniel Dawson, Louis Draper, Albert Fennar, Shawn Walker, and many others. Original cream wrappers, spine and front cover lettered in black, photographic illustrations on front wrapper. Wrappers faintly toned, edges of wrappers and book block slightly creased: a very good copy.