Malcolm X, the Photographer and Filmmaker.

Malcolm X was one of the most media-savvy black leaders of the period.

By the time of his assassination in 1965, he was also one of the most photographed and televised, appearing on hundreds of local and national interview programs.

Handsome, charismatic and articulate, he provided the mainstream news media with a continuing and histrionic story that would enrapture its readers and listeners.

Malcolm X: The Great Photographs by Thunani Davis features the brilliant work of some of the world's most renowned photographers; Gordon Parks, Eve Arnold, Henri Cartier Bresson, and many others.

Who can forget Robert L. Flora’s black-and-white portrait of Malcolm X, the national spokesman for the Nation of Islam, stands as one of the great meta-images about photography — an astute commentary on our insatiable hunger for pictures.

Taken in Los Angeles in May 1963, the photo depicts the civil rights leader and his associates as they await the verdict of an all-white jury deliberating the fate of 14 Black Muslims accused of assaulting police officers. The pictorial magazines and tabloid newspapers they voraciously read to pass the time nearly crowd out the image.

Malcolm X, a visual strategist with a passionate engagement with photography and filmmaking.

All of us have seen documentaries, movies, read commentaries and listen to lectures about Malcom X. That said, I basically contend no matter how we’ve read seen, heard and otherwise, we still don’t have a complete picture and understand who Malcolm X really was.

The late Civil Rights photographer, Ernest C. Withers once said, “The picture tells the story”. Many people often ask me why I don’t appear in many of my photographs or in groups, my answer is very simple, you are seeing me through my work. It is in this idea, I speak to Malcolm X.

While Malcolm X viewed the “white press” as more or less a lost cause, he knew how to use the “white Press and in turn the news media afforded him a national platform for espousing his views.

If Malcolm was a talented visual strategist in front of the camera, he was nothing less than a prodigy in behind it as well.

As the late Gordon Parks once observed, it was his way of “collecting evidence”, where he traveled to throughout this country and the world.
He relied on photographs to provide the visual proof of Black Muslim productivity and equanimity that sensationalistic headlines and verbal reporting often negated.

When photojournalists visited the community, Malcolm would steer them toward the kinds of affirmative images shots of contented family life, children at play and school, and thriving businesses and institutions.

He crafted every aspect of the camera’s persona, from the cool self-confidence he exuded in still images to the urbane speaking style and command of ideas that were the hallmarks of his television appearances.

In her book “Flashback - The 1950s by Eve Arnold: Ms .Arnold writes of Malcolm’s passion for getting the picture right. From 1959 through 1960, while she won Malcolm X’s trust, he continually inserted himself into her process, guiding her through Black Muslim enclaves in Chicago, New York and Washington and even, at one point, walking out 10 women in traditional Black Muslim attire and posing them for a photo shoot. Ms. Arnold once said “Malcolm set up the shots and I clicked the camera”

In the end, it is Malcolm X’s photographer’s eye and filmmaking engagement, couple with the precision and sophistication of his self-presentation that reads most vividly in his photography from the fashionable, well-tailored clothes, the chic eyeglasses, the relaxed yet formal posture, and the refined hand gesture, details meant to convey both composure and authority.

No matter what Malcolm X’s motivations for taking photography and filming his subjects, his travels, much as always, he succeeded in getting his message across. And through the myriad ideas he communicated through photographs, Malcolm X not only transformed the Nation of Islam, more importantly he transformed all of us.

Malcolm X -The mind and spirit of a Master Photographer.

I’ve been blessed with the mind and creative eye of a Photographer and filmmaker. I’ve often said, “photographers are much more than people who photograph – they are historians of time”. I personally knew many well known photographers, from James Van Der Zee who photographed my family, to Gordon Parks and Ernest C. Withers who mentored me in many ways.

To date, we view many of the known photographers and married with their work with their philosophies. Therein we had a clear and more complete sense of who they were.

To that end, It’s very difficult finding the photography and filming’s of the late Malcom X. Accordingly, it is in that body of work that gives us a more complete dimension of what he saw, felt and therein spoke and wrote about.

Malcolm X, was visual strategist and had a passionate engagement with photography and filmmaking. With all due respects to Gordon Parks, Eve Davis, Thunani Davis, Spike Lee and others – until we see Malcolm’s photography and films we’ll never have a complete sense of the inner mind and passion of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz also known as Malcolm X.

Lastly, many of us have seen the famous picture of Malcolm X by the window with the Carbine rifle. However, I quote the late Gordon Parks and which speaks to the mind of Malcolm X as the Photographer and Filmmaker, “A choice of weapons – I chose my camera as a weapon against all things I dislike about America – poverty, racism, discrimination”