Library of Congress acquires major archive of African American photographer Shawn Walker

Shawn Walker’s “Neighbor at 124 W 117th St, Harlem, New York,” ca. 1970-1979. (Shawn Walker/Library of Congress)

The Library of Congress announced Wednesday the acquisition of the entire archive of African American photographer Shawn Walker.

Capturing street shadows with the same care he brought to taking pictures of Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison, Walker has spanned genres and blended styles over his five decades as a photographer. He spent 30 years documenting community parades and has recently turned his attention to other visual investigations: reflections and walls.

Beverly Brannan, the library’s curator of photography, found the artistic aspect of Walker’s archive surprising. “I work almost exclusively with documentary photographs,” she said, “but he examines crystals and reflections and abstract patterns of things.”

The Walker archive — 100,000 photographs, negatives and transparencies capturing life on the streets of Harlem from 1963 to now — will be the library’s first full archive of work by an African American photographer accessible to the public. Such an acquisition is rare — until now, the library had only seven comprehensive, single-photographer archives. (The library’s Robert McNeill archive, the only other comprehensive, single-photographer archive by an African American, is restricted from public view until Oct. 1, 2022.)

The library strives to obtain representative archives from every era, Brannon said, “but we did not have a large group of African American photographs from the late 20th century. This fit a need.”

The acquisition also features 2,500 objects from the Kamoinge Workshop, an influential collective of African American photographers that was founded in Harlem in 1963 as a response to discrimination against black photographers at major publications. Walker, 80, was a founding member of the group, which also included Louis Draper and Walker mentor Roy DeCarava, and has called the Kamoinge his “Sorbonne.”

Walker received his first camera as a birthday gift in his early teens and began taking photos in his Harlem neighborhood. Eventually, he went to work as a photographer for black newspapers, before co-founding the Kamoinge Workshop when he was 23. Inspired by such artists as Romare Bearden, who illustrated black life with colorful collages, and photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, best known for championing photography that captures the “decisive moment,” Walker said he tries to remain unseen as a photographer, depicting reality in all its spontaneity.

“I have tried to document the world around me, particularly the African American community, especially in Harlem, from an honest perspective so that our history is not lost,” Walker said in a statement announcing the acquisition.

Brannan said the library is in conversation with Kamoinge groups across the Mid-Atlantic about expanding the library’s collection, and an exhibition related to the Walker acquisition is being discussed. Works by several Kamoinge photographers, including Walker, are now on view at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in the exhibition “Working Together: Louis Draper and the Kamoinge Workshop,” which will travel to the Whitney this summer.