Roland Freeman

Roland L. Freeman
Born (1936-07-27) 27 July 1936
Baltimore, Maryalnd
Occupation Photographer, quilter
Website http://www.tgcd.org/

Roland L. Freeman (born July 27, 1936) is a photographer and award-winning documenter of Southern folk culture and African-American quilters. He is the president of The Group for Cultural Documentation based in Washington, D.C.

Early life

Roland Freeman was born in Baltimore, Maryland. As a youth, his future life’s work was inspired when he discovered the Depression-era photography of Gordon Parks and Roy DeCarava, which focused on raising the social consciousness, as well as the work of Farm Security Administration photographers. When Freeman was 14, he met the author and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston, who would also be a great influence on his subsequent career.

Freeman served in the US Air Force from 1954 to 1958.[1] He began taking photographs in the DC area in 1963, inspired by the March on Washington.[2]

In 1968, he not only participated in but also documented the Poor People's Campaign and the Mule Train[3] trip from Marks, Mississippi, to the nation's capital.[4]

He worked as a stringer for Time and Magnum Photos, including coverage as a White House photographer. In 1997, Freeman was named the Eudora Welty Visiting Professor of Southern Studies at Millsaps College (Jackson, MS).

Career as photodocumentarian

In 1970, he co-directed the Mississippi FolkLife Project for the Smithsonian Institution's Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. In 1972, he became a research associate there.

In that capacity, Freeman photographed staff at the White House, including Mrs. Lillian Rogers Parks, who worked there for 30 years. Several of Freeman’s photographs of African Americans at the White House are included in the “The Working White House” webpage.[5][6]

“While There is Still Time”

Freeman has for years been working on a self-assigned project "While There Is Still Time," a study of Black culture throughout the African Diaspora. He uses the camera as a tool to research, document and interpret the continuity of traditional African-American folklife practices. This work is generally done in close collaboration with folklorists, historians, sociologists and community activists, often in methodologically innovative ways that have been integral to his contributions to the work of photographers of his generation.[7]

Influence on American quilt history

Freeman has spent more than 20 years photographing African-American quilters and guilds. He collected biographic information about the quilters’ lives and their motivations for quiltmaking. He also documented collectors of African-American-made quilts.

A Communion of the Spirits was a landmark American quilt history book, as no one else prior to Freeman had performed a national survey of Black quilters. The book covers 38 states and the District of Columbia. Quilt guilds documented in A Communion of the Spirits include: The African American Quilters of Baltimore, the Freedom Quilting Bee of Alberta, AL, the African American Quilters of Los Angeles, and more. Quilt collectors included Nikki Giovanni, Maya Angelou, and Beverly Guy-Sheftall.

An exhibit of Freeman's quilt photographs are on permanent collection at the Smith Robertson Museum in Jackson, MS. In 2008, he organized a quilt exhibition to celebrate President Obama.[8][9]

Books

Exhibition catalogs

Awards

In 1970, Freeman became the first photographer to be awarded a Young Humanist Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has received two Masters of Photography Visual Arts Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, one in 1982 and one in 1991. He received the Living Legend Award for Distinguished Achievement in Photography from the National Black Arts Festival in 1994. In 1997, he received an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from Millsaps College.

Bibliography

St. James Guide to Black Artists, Thomas Riggs and Schomburg Center for Research in Black C, pages 201 – 202.

References

  1. ↑ St. James Guide to Black Artists, Roland’s profile, p. 201.
  2. ↑ National Endowment for the Arts: National Heritage Fellowships.
  3. ↑ Photographer Roland Freeman is keynote speaker April 9. Arkansas State University, retrieved April 7, 2010.
  4. ↑ National Endowment for the Arts: National Heritage Fellowships.
  5. ↑ A Working Family White House History website
  6. ↑ White House Working Family Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service
  7. ↑ Roland Freeman The Group for Cultural Documentation.
  8. ↑ Beltway Happenings George Washington University, retrieved January 21, 2009.
  9. ↑ Quilts for Obama George Washington University, retrieved January 11, 2009.
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