Black in America

Eli Reed's portrait of African-American culture is a sweeping photojournalistic view--ranging from anonymous small town scenes to Washington D.C.'s Mayor Marion Barry receiving the clergy's blessing. His aim is to present a complex portrait of many different lives, expanding the image of being Balck in America.

This stunning portfolio of photographs shows the exquisite range of Black America, its pain and its sorrow, its joy and triumph, and, above all, its humanity. Eli Reed, a photographer and filmmaker, winner of numerous awards, has crisscrossed the United States from the Carolinas to California, documenting the many faces of black life. Here are children playing gleefully on wrecked cars in Harlem, a homeless couple in Philadelphia, seemingly too dispirited to look at the camera, and prom-goers at a Brooklyn high school. In his introduction, Reed writes that he began photographing black people as a "simple way of honoring my parents and acknowledging what they had experienced during their lives." He has done just that in representing the black experience faithfully and with dignity.