These Black Women Photographers Are Carving Out a Place in History

Long excluded from mainstream histories, this anthology is giving women photographers of African descent a platform to tell their stories.

During the recent unveiling of the official portraits of former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, conversations about the intersection of art and race took center stage.

Artists Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald became the first African American painters to paint the first African American president and first lady of the United States.

“I’m also thinking about all the young people—particularly girls and girls of color—who in years ahead will come to this place and they will look up and they will see an image of someone who looks like them hanging on the wall of this great American institution,” Michelle Obama said at the ceremony. “I

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