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Roland Freeman
event
Photographs and Reminiscents
Presentation by Roland L. Freeman
Photo Documentarian, Author, and Exhibit Curator
Recipient of the 2007 NEA National Heritage Fellowship – 2007 Bess
Lomax Hawes Award
When: Wednesday, October 3, 2007, 6:30 PM
Where: Northern Virginia
Community College, Alexandria Campus
Roland Freeman was inspired by the socially conscious Depression-era
photography of Gordon Parks and Roy DeCarava as well as the Farm
Security Administration photographers. At age 14, he met the author/folklorist
Zora Neale Hurston, who also greatly influenced his life’s work.
A native of Baltimore, inspired by Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream Speech,”
he began making photographs in the Washington, DC area in 1963. In
1968, he participated in and documented the Poor People’s Campaign
and the Mule Train trip from Marks, Mississippi to the Nation’s capital.
Even while stringing for Magnum Photos in Washington, DC, and doing
assignments with Time and Newsweek, including coverage as a White
House photographer, his real passion throughout his career has been
the documentation of traditional African American folklife practices.
In 1991, Freeman helped found The Group for Cultural Documentation,
Inc. To date, Roland Freeman has authored six books, of which five
were accompanied by national and international touring exhibits.
It is highly recommended that all participants visit his website: www.tgcd.org.
bio
Roland L. Freeman is the founder and president
of The Group for Cultural Documentation (TGCD), a publicly supported
tax-exempt organization established in 1991 to contribute to the
strength of our nation through the understanding, preserving, and
bridging of cultural identities and traditions. TGCD creates
opportunities to support individuals and groups of diverse backgrounds
and experiences in developing the understanding and communication
skills necessary to function more effectively within the broader
society.
Freeman is a Washington, DC-based freelance photographer, whose work has been
published widely and exhibited throughout the world, often along with quilts
and other artifacts from his extensive collection of work by African Americans. He
was the first photographer to be awarded a Young Humanist Fellowship by the National
Endowment for the Humanities (1970), has received two Masters of Photography
Visual Arts Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1982, 1991),
the Living Legend Award for Distinguished Achievement in Photography from the
National Black Arts Festival (1994), and an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters
from Millsaps College (Jackson, MS; 1997). Freeman was awarded the prestigious
National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts (2007).
Freeman,
a native of Baltimore, Maryland, began his professional career in
the 1960's, photographing the Civil Rights Movement. Assignments
since then have emphasized photojournalism, commercial work, and
photo-documentation. He has been a research associate for the
Smithsonian Institution’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage
since 1972, a faculty member at several universities, and during
1997, the Eudora Welty Visiting Professor of Southern Studies at
Millsaps College.
A major emphasis of Freeman's work is his ongoing
self-assigned project “While There Is Still Time,” a study of Black
culture throughout the African Diaspora that uses the camera as a
tool to research, document, and interpret the continuity of traditional
African American folklife practices. This work is generally done
in close collaboration with folklorists, historians, sociologists,
and community activists, often in methodologically innovative ways
that have been integral to his contributions to the work of photographers
of his generation.
Books by Freeman include: Something To Keep You Warm: The Roland
Freeman Collection of Black American Quilts from the Mississippi
Heartland (Mississippi Department of Archives and History,
1979); Southern Roads/City Pavements: Photographs of Black
Americans (International Center of Photography, New
York, NY, 1981); Stand By Me: African American Expressive Culture
in Philadelphia (Smithsonian Institution’s Office of Folklife
Programs, 1989); The Arabbers of Baltimore (Tidewater
Publishers, Centreville, MD, 1989); Margaret Walker’s ‘For
My People’: A Tribute, Photographs by Roland L. Freeman (University
Press of Mississippi, Jackson and London, 1992); A Communion
of the Spirits: African-American Quilters, Preservers, and Their
Stories (Rutledge Hill Press, Nashville, TN, 1996); and, The
Mule Train: A Journey of Hope Remembered (Rutledge Hill Press,
Nashville, TN, 1998). Each has been accompanied by a national/international
touring exhibit. Fire in My Bones: Transcendence and
the Holy Spirit in African American Gospel by Glenn Hinson,
photographs by Roland L. Freeman (University of Pennsylvania, 2000),
won theChicago Folklore Prize, an international award recognizing
the most significant book in the discipline for the year. His
latest book is a collective biography entitled, A Tribute to
Worth Long, Still on the Case: A Pioneer’s Continuing Commitment (The
Group for Cultural Documentation and the Smithsonian Center for
Folklife and Cultural Heritage, 2006).
Magazine work includes: London Sunday Times (England), Der
Stern (Germany), Paris-Match (France), l’Express (France), Sfera (Italy), Quilt
Japan (Japan), Time, Newsweek, Forbes, Nation’s
Business, Inc., Human Behavior, Family Circle, Health Quest, Southern
Cultures Journal, Essence, Black Enterprise, Emerge, The World
and I, and National Geographic. Major photo
essays have appeared in: The State of the Cities, A Report
of the Commission on the Cities in the 70’s (Praeger New York,
1972); Children Out of School (Children’s Defense Fund,
Washington, D.C., 1974); and, Neighborhoods: A Self-Help Sampler (Department
of Housing and Urban Development, Washington, D.C., 1979). |
