Father Swings Son in Sunset, Tuskegee, Alabama
Chester Higgins, American, born 1946
1973
Gelatin silver print
Image: 7 × 5 1/16 in. (17.8 × 12.9 cm)
Sheet: 9 15/16 × 8 1/16 in. (25.3 × 20.4 cm)
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Purchased through the Contemporary Art Fund
© Chester Higgins, all rights reserved. Courtesy of Bruce Silverstein Gallery
2023.2.2
Geography
Place Imaged: Tuskgegee, United States, North America
Place Made: United States, North America
Period
20th century
Object Name
Photograph
Research Area
Photograph
Not on view
Inscriptions
Signed, on reverse, below center, in graphite: Chester Higgins; inscribed, on reverse, top edge, in graphite: Tuskegee 1308N21 / Cover- DRums of Life book; Stamped, on reverse, above center, upside down, in black ink: COPYRIGHTED PHOTOGRAPH / By CHESTER HIGGINS, JR. / CREDIT MUST / BE GIVEN; Stamped, on reverse, center, in black ink: [Eye of Horus] / [in rectangle] CHESTER HIGGINS JR. / COPYRIGHTED PHOTOGRAPH / ALL RIGHTS RESERVED; Stamped, on reverse, lower right, in black ink: [Eye of Horus] / CHESTER / HIGGINS / c[circled] JR
Label
Silhouetted against a setting sun, a father swings his child. Chester Higgins selected this photograph for the cover of his 1974 book Drums of Life: A Photographic Essay on the Black Man in America. This collection of Higgins’s photographs documented African American men in a positive light that reflected the artist’s lived experience. In choosing this image, Higgins made the father/child relationship central to his message about Black men in America. In the early 1970s, this bucolic image of family would have forcefully refuted stigmatizing impressions of Black fatherhood promoted by both the media and government documents.
From the 2024 exhibition And I'm Feeling Good: Relaxation and Resistance, curated by Alisa Swindell, Associate Curator of Photography
Exhibition History
And I'm Feeling Good: Relaxation and Resistance, Ivan Albright Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 20-April 13, 2024.
Published References
Echo of the Spirit, A Photographer’s Journey, Doubleday, Random House, Inc, 2004; p. 378. Drums of Life, A Photographic Essay on the Black Man in America, 1974; p. 5, 129 and cover.
Provenance
The artist, personal archive; Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York, New York; sold to present collection, 2023.
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