For the first time in 30 years, a book celebrates black women photographers

In the 1980s, Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe an American photographer, wanted to document the contributions of black female photographers in the United States. She dug through US Census reports and business directories to track down women like Jennie Louise Van Der Zee Welcome, who photographed the Harlem renaissance, or Elizabeth “Tex” Williams, the first black photographer in the Women’s Army Corp during World War II. Moutoussamy-Ashe finally published Viewfinders: Black Women Photographers in 1986, updating it in 1993. Since then there has been no other comprehensive compilation of the work of black women photographers.

More than 30 years later, Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, a photographerbased in Brooklyn, is publishing an anthology of work by black women photographers descent, Mfon: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora. Barrayn’s book, funded by a grant from the Brooklyn Arts Council as well as a crowdfunding campaign, features 100 female photographers of the African diaspora, including those based in the US, Africa, Europe, and the Caribbean. It’s named after Mmekutmfon ‘Mfon’ Essien, a young Nigerian-American photographer who passed away in 2001.

The book is the beginning of what will be an annual publication. Barrayn and her partners will also be offering a grant later this year to a woman photographer of African descent. Quartz spoke to Barrayn about Mfon, which will be available later this month.

Quartz: Why did you name the book after Mmekutmfon ‘Mfon’ Essien?

Laylah Amatullah Barrayn: I thought it would be really fitting to have it be in honor of Mfon, who was someone that I wanted to meet as an aspiring photographer back in the 1990s. I loved her sense of self and pride as a woman and as a Nigerian-American woman. She faced her illness, breast cancer, head on. She created art around her mastectomy and was a muse for many of the visual artists in New York City at the time. She died right before the opening of her seminal work, ”The Amazon’s New Clothes,” part of the “Committed to the Image” …

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