The Louis Draper Project

I want to write a few words about how excited I am to be working for the preservation trust of photographer Louis Draper.

This is a story that is going to take a long slow while to tell but over the coming months we are going to try to share our experience of discovering and preserving Mr. Draper’s photography and we are going to do what we can to get the word out about this incredible individual. A native Richmonder, Draper moved to New York City in 1957 and, as a young photographer, was a peer to many important figures from New York’s cultural and artistic scenes and eventually became an innovator, educator, and Civil Rights activist. In short, we hope to bring some long overdue recognition to a man who spent his life refining and sharing his knowledge of photography. And it should prove to be exciting for anyone with an interest in 20th c. photography or the Civil Rights movement or photography upon or New York City photographers or Harlem in particular, or any of a dozen other visual and aesthetic threads that can be found in such an expansive life’s work.