Career
He received many honors during his lifetime, including two Visual Artist Fellowships in photography from the National Endowment for the Arts, and many commissions for public works including the Los Angeles Metro Expo/Crenshaw Station. His work has been collected by major museums including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Studio Museum in Harlem and LACMA. In 1960 his family moved to Greater Los Los Angeles The social activism and outreach he made to the Greater Los Angeles community was honored many times, including being awarded a City of Los Angeles Individual Artist Fellowship grant from the Department of Cultural Affairs in 2009.
This was after over 20 years of awards and acknowledgment including three commendations from the Los Angeles City Council for his photography, and being named a “Hometown Hero” by the City of Compton.
His influence reached much further than Los Angeles from his work being shown nationally in gallery settings, to his work as a director for the Society for Photographic Education. He even did a stint as a photographer for Time Magazine, having images of the African-American struggle in Los Angeles, mostly published in the European Editions.
He is also well known for his photographic printing techniques, where he has painted photographic emulsion thickly, in a dripping fashion on surfaces, and then exposing this photosensitive material to make a print. He would do this in multiple layers.