Hello, my name is Rick Young and I am a Gallery Attendant at the museum. I will be reading the Shadows, Reflections, and Abstractions section text for Working Together: The Photographers of the Kamoinge Workshop.

Street photography—usually understood as pictures made in and showing the real world—forms a large part of the Kamoinge Workshop’s output. Yet, abstraction was always a crucial part of the group’s conversation. As is evident in this part of the gallery and throughout the exhibition, Kamoinge artists often photographed the real world in ways that emphasized its abstract or surreal qualities. Some explored formal and aesthetic aspects of image-making without a preconceived social reference or symbolic meaning. Others used light and shadow to express an inner state through a depiction of things. And, on some occasions, they turned abstraction toward overt social and political meaning.

Members including Louis Draper, Albert R. Fennar and Adger Cowans came into the Workshop having already developed both realist and abstract styles in their photography. By the late 1960s and the 1970s, many members were experimenting with abstraction, leading to ongoing dialogue about shadows, reflections, and identity. Their explorations were also informed by the work of other artists they admired, and by a broader conversation among artists, critics and historians on the nature and possible meanings of abstraction in a medium closely associated with realistic depiction.

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