Eye Dreaming: Photographs by Anthony Barboza

“I’m trying to explain being Black in this country,” says photographer Barboza (b. 1944), in an illuminating interview included in this career retrospective and first monograph on the artist. The title explores his major influences, including a stint as a Navy photographer, participation in the Kamoinge Workshop (a Black photographers’ collective formed in 1963), and photographer-mentors such as Adger Cowans. Crucial to Barboza’s output—portraiture, fashion, fine art, album covers, street photography—is the sway of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s–70s and Barboza’s desire to articulate a uniquely Black voice and aesthetic. For him, photographing is “eye dreaming,” a powerful flow state encompassing mind, body, and the photographer’s total life experiences. Includes 216 color photographs and essays by New Yorker theater critic Hilton Als and photography curators Aaron Bryant (National Museum of African American History and Culture), and Mazie M. Harris (Getty Museum).