The Artist Portrait Series: Images of Contemporary African American Artist

When photographer Fern Logan was an art student in the 1970s, African-American artists were represented in academia even less well than today. To rectify this blanket omission, Logan embarked in the mid-'80s on The Artist Portrait Series: Images of Contemporary African American Artists. In her introduction, Deborah Willis, curator at the Center for African American History and Culture of the Smithsonian Institution, writes, ""Logan's portraits `unfix' the `shadows' of photographic construction to reveal... the self-construction of the sitter."" Logan's 61 subjects include Alvin Ailey, Maya Angelou and Romare Bearden as well as important, lesser-known artists like sculptor Selma Burke (commissioned to make a plaque with FDR's likeness, which was then used on the dime without her permission or any recompense), sculptor and printmaker Elizabeth Catlett and painter Ed Clark. ( May)