The Picture Man: From the Collection of Bay Area Photographer E. F. Joseph - Hardcover

Beckford, Ruth; Reid, Careth

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1540214591 ISBN 13: 9781540214591

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Library Editions, 2017

Synopsis

From 1927 until his death in 1979, E.F. Joseph documented the daily lives of African Americans in the Bay Area. His images were printed in the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender but not widely published in his home community. A graduate of the American School of Photography in Illinois, Joseph photographed the likes of such celebrities and activists as Josephine Baker, Mahalia Jackson, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Thurgood Marshall. However, what is perhaps more compelling within these pages are the countless images of everyday citizens―teaching, entertaining, worshipping, working, and serving their community and their nation.

About this title

About the Author

In 1980, Careth Reid purchased Joseph’s collection of negatives and personal papers, and nearly four decades later, a labor of love comes to fruition with the publication of The Picture Man. Reid, a lifelong educator and champion of community service in the Bay Area, partnered with longtime friend Ruth Beckford, a dancer, teacher, choreographer, actor, and author. Reid, a native of Berkeley, was the recipient of San Francisco State University’s Alumna of the Year Award in 1990 and is also a member of the university’s Hall of Fame. Beckford, a lifelong resident of Oakland, is featured in a downtown mural of the community’s artists and was also celebrated as an Outstanding Alumni of Oakland Technical High School in 2015. Together, they tell the story of the Bay Area’s African American community through the eye and lens of one of its own.

Review

"Joseph, who died in 1979, was the Bay Area’s first black professional photographer....

Yet had it not been for Careth Reid, an 85-year-old Oakland resident with a passion for preserving the history that she grew up with, many of Joseph’s photographs would have landed on the garbage heap....

Reid’s friend Ruth Beckford, 91, the Bay Area dance legend, told her she should write a book about Joseph. Reid said that Beckford should do it.

“I told her I ain’t writing no book,” Beckford said. “That night, God woke me up at 2:30. I wrote the foreword, I designed the cover, and after a half hour or two, I went back to sleep.”" East Bay Times

About this edition

• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Library Editions
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1540214591
• ISBN 13: 9781540214591
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 130