There are artists.
And then there are witnesses.
For more than two decades, I have had the privilege of either knowing Chester Higgins Jr. or his work. I have felt a sense of indebtedness or gratitude for what Chester Higgins has done for my own - they say we stand on the shoulders of giants? Chester is our eye of Horus.
We are not close friends in the conventional sense, but we have shared conversations, projects, and a mutual regard that has endured over the years. During that time, I have quietly come to believe something that I suspect history will increasingly affirm: Chester Higgins Jr. is among the most important visual historians of the modern era and, in many respects, a worthy recipient of the baton passed by his ancestor and mentor, Gordon Parks.
Chester is not simply a photographer.
He is a keeper of memory. He is a witness to an important tome in American History - the global African during our last 500 years by a consequential capture of the 20th century and early 21st century zeitgeists. He has captured some of planet earth's most brilliant peoples not only survive but thrive 5 centuries of radical self determination, self invention and a humbling love of self.
For nearly four decades as a staff photographer for The New York Times, he chronicled the spiritual, cultural, political, and artistic dimensions of Black life with extraordinary dignity and grace. His images of Muhammad Ali, Maya Angelou, Amiri Baraka, and countless others do far more than document history. They reveal it. They remind us that photography, at its highest expression, is not the act of taking a picture. It is the act of seeing.
