Then there is consistently astonishing work of Roy Decarava whose lighting schemes strategically carve his figures out of the darkness that surrounds them. Showing the heroically large shadows looming ahead of three figures walking a city block, the photo suggests something about the interior lives of Black people, the dreams they carried that made their lives seem fuller and richer than they may have been in daily practice. Cowans’s “Shadows, New York” (1961) is intimate in a very different way.

1960s) image of a semi-nude Black woman is tantalizing in its furtive angle and framing. Here among the works chronicling the lives of Black people are photographs by Herb Randall whose “New Jersey” (ca. In the very next room which is captioned “New York: The Kamoinge Workshop and Roy Decarava” that black-and-white motif continues, but takes on a documentary duty. Lewis courtesy Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York) (97.5 x 146.4 cm) (private collection, © Estate of Norman W. Norman Lewis, “Processional” (aka Procession),(1965) oil on canvas, 38 3/8 x 57 5/8 in. The painting is titled “America the Beautiful.”

I knew in that moment that if the story alluded to in the image played out, that cross would soon be on fire. Then, in another painting by Lewis, this one from 1960, the figures metastasize throughout the background, shrouded in white as if enrobed by it - some of them look like triangles with heads and two feet. The one that faces the viewer entering through the main doors, “Processional” (1965), contains a ground that is black, and an abstract array of interwoven, almost-cubist off-white figures wend across the canvas like an undulant line of figures seen through a fun-house telescope. How meaningful this contrast can be is illustrated by two paintings by Norman Lewis. Except for Richard Mayhew’s “Pastoral” painting, which is itself a muted arrangement of heathery tones, this introductory room is monochrome, black made stentorian situated against shades of white, and white made vivid against ebony. In the first gallery of the Soul of a Nation exhibition at Brooklyn Museum one is confronted with a Manichean visual scheme.

Norman Lewis, “America the Beautiful” (1960) oil on canvas, 50 x 64 inches (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

Soul of a Nation by Mark Godfrey