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Photographer Spotlight: Chester Higgins
August 25, 2021 @ 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm EDT
“We all share a sacred legacy. Ancient Nile River cultures on land today in Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt merit a seminal place in the history of faith. For the past 40 years, I have been searching for evidence — at Nile antiquity sites as well as at contemporary ceremonies — that identify our connections.
Sacred Nile uncovers and embraces similarities that validate our collective religious heritage. Through the images and text in this project, I present how our spiritual histories arose from a common ancestry and how the foundation of this sacred heritage exists in Northeast Africa.”
By Chester Higgins
ISBN 978-0-578-85118-1
WHEN: Wednesday, August 25, 2021
TIME: 7pm to 8:30pm
WHERE: ZOOM
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CHESTER HIGGINS Jr. BIOGRAPHY
Chester Higgins Jr., is an award-winning, pre-eminent African American photographer of the African Diaspora, an author and public speaker; he was born in Alabama in November 1946. Higgins was graduated from Tuskegee University in 1970, where he was first mentored in photography by P.H. Polk from 1967-69. His experiences with his family’s church community, as well as with college campus student protests, were formative in helping him develop the direction of his artistic practice. Higgins was further mentored in photography by Arthur Rothstein (LOOK Magazine / Farm Services Administration) from 1969-78; Cornell Capa (International Center of Photography) 1970-90 and Gordon Parks (LIFE magazine) from 1971-80. Higgins was also mentored in art under Romare Bearden from 1972-80. Higgins was a staff photographer for The New York Times from 1975 to 2014, and his photographs have been published in Newsweek, New York Times Sunday Magazine, LOOK, LIFE, Fortune, Ebony, Essence, ArtNews, Geo, Black Enterprise, The Village Voice, New York Magazine and The New Yorker. Higgins is the author of many books, including Black Woman (McCalls Publishing, New York, 1970); Drums of Life (Doubleday/Anchor Press, New York,1974); Some Time Ago (DoubledayAnchor Press, New York, 1980); Feeling the Spirit: Searching the World for the People of Africa (Bantam Books, New York, 1994); Elder Grace: The Nobility of Aging (Bulfinch Press, Boston, 2000); Echo of the Spirit: A Photographer’s Journey (Doubleday, 2004), Ancient Nubia: African Kingdoms on the Nile (American University Press, Cairo, 2012) and Sacred Nile (2021). Higgins’s work has been the subject of many international exhibitions, and is held in notable collections, such as The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond, and The Brooklyn Museum of Art. Higgins has been the recipient of grants from The Ford Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, The International Center of Photography and the National Endowment for The Arts. His work has been the topic of two PBS documentaries, An American Photographer: Chester Higgins and BrotherMen (2001). He was also interviewed and his work as “Soul!” staff photographer were included in the documentary Mr.Soul (2020). He has been featured on CBS-TV: Sunday Morning; PBS: The News Hour; ABC-TV: Like It Is and Freedom Forum. Higgins has also received the Global Citizenship Award, International Youth Leadership Institute (2013), The Gordon Parks Legend Award and the Nubian Women’s Art Circle Award. Bruce Silverstein, his exclusive gallery, presented his solo exhibition, Chester Higgins: The Indelible Spirit curated by Carrie Springer in 2021. Higgins lives and works with his wife, writer and editor, Betsy Kissam in Brooklyn, New York.