BLACK HISTORY 365
Chester Higgins Jr.
Chester Higgins Jr. was born in Fairhope, Alabama, but grew up in New Brockton, Alabama. He attended Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University), where he was mentored by the school's official photographer, P. H. Polk.
Higgins graduated in 1970 from Tuskegee University, and soon after moved to New York City to begin his professional career; his first assignment was to follow and document the political activities of Jesse Jackson, then a young civil rights activist.
In 1975, Higgins began his work as a photographer for the New York Times, an association that would continue throughout his professional career. Over the years, Higgins’s photographs were also published in Look, Life, Time, Newsweek, Fortune, Ebony, Essence and Black Enterprise magazines.
Higgins has traveled to the African continent some 50 times since first going to Senegal in 1971, and according to Lonnie Bunch Higgins captured an Africa which has a spirit of hope, of possibility and that in some ways he believed will shape the African-American experience as well. Burch also said of Higgins that “He elevated photography from documentary to fine art.”
Work by Higgins is included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art and has been included in numerous book collections and appeared in publications such as Newsweek, Fortune, Look, Essence and Life.
In addition to his photojournalistic achievements, Higgins published several collections of his photography, including: Black Woman in 1970; Feeling the Spirit: Searching the World for the People of Africa in 1994; the Elder Grace: The Nobility of Aging in 2000; Sacred Nile in 2021; and Echo of the Spirit: A Photographer’s Journey in 2004. Higgins’s work was featured in a variety of solo exhibits, including the traveling exhibition Landscapes of the Soul, which toured nationally at locations such as the Smithsonian Institution, and the Museum for African Art in New York City. Selections of Higgins’s photography was acquired for the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Higgins has been the recipient of grants from the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the International Center of Photography, the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Revolution Bicentennial Commission, and the Andy Warhol Foundation, to carry out his work. Higgens received a Lifetime Achievement His mission statement is as follows: “Wrestling with issues of memory, place and identity, I see my life as a narrative and my photography as its expression. My art gives visual voice to my personal and collective memories. It is inside ordinary moments where I find windows into larger meaning. Light, perspective, and points in time are the pivotal elements I use to reveal an interior presence within my subjects as I search for what I identify as the Signature of the Spirit.” Awards from The Silurian Press Club of NYC in 2022.
In 2022, Higgins was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum.
Carol Brown
February 1, 2024
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester_Higgins_Jr.
Higgins graduated in 1970 from Tuskegee University, and soon after moved to New York City to begin his professional career; his first assignment was to follow and document the political activities of Jesse Jackson, then a young civil rights activist.
In 1975, Higgins began his work as a photographer for the New York Times, an association that would continue throughout his professional career. Over the years, Higgins’s photographs were also published in Look, Life, Time, Newsweek, Fortune, Ebony, Essence and Black Enterprise magazines.
Higgins has traveled to the African continent some 50 times since first going to Senegal in 1971, and according to Lonnie Bunch Higgins captured an Africa which has a spirit of hope, of possibility and that in some ways he believed will shape the African-American experience as well. Burch also said of Higgins that “He elevated photography from documentary to fine art.”
Work by Higgins is included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art and has been included in numerous book collections and appeared in publications such as Newsweek, Fortune, Look, Essence and Life.
In addition to his photojournalistic achievements, Higgins published several collections of his photography, including: Black Woman in 1970; Feeling the Spirit: Searching the World for the People of Africa in 1994; the Elder Grace: The Nobility of Aging in 2000; Sacred Nile in 2021; and Echo of the Spirit: A Photographer’s Journey in 2004. Higgins’s work was featured in a variety of solo exhibits, including the traveling exhibition Landscapes of the Soul, which toured nationally at locations such as the Smithsonian Institution, and the Museum for African Art in New York City. Selections of Higgins’s photography was acquired for the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Higgins has been the recipient of grants from the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the International Center of Photography, the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Revolution Bicentennial Commission, and the Andy Warhol Foundation, to carry out his work. Higgens received a Lifetime Achievement His mission statement is as follows: “Wrestling with issues of memory, place and identity, I see my life as a narrative and my photography as its expression. My art gives visual voice to my personal and collective memories. It is inside ordinary moments where I find windows into larger meaning. Light, perspective, and points in time are the pivotal elements I use to reveal an interior presence within my subjects as I search for what I identify as the Signature of the Spirit.” Awards from The Silurian Press Club of NYC in 2022.
In 2022, Higgins was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum.
Carol Brown
February 1, 2024
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester_Higgins_Jr.