Art History
Model in Kwame Brathwaite Photo Identified After 54 Years
The National Gallery of Art has retitled the work in response to the discovery.
The late Brooklyn-born Barbadian photographer Kwame Brathwaite supplied the “Black Is Beautiful” movement of the 1960s with scores of gorgeous images. A formerly anonymous model who starred in one such photo from 1972, held by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., has finally been identified as Manasie Ree Horn, a model from Mobile, Alabama.
The NGA has now renamed Brathwaite’s artwork, updating its title from Untitled (Portrait, Reels as Necklace) to Untitled (Portrait of Manasie Ree Horn with Reels as Necklace).
Brathwaite often included the names of his sitters while titling artworks, as in Untitled (Clara Lewis Buggs with Yellow Flower), 1962, or Untitled (Nomsa Brath with Earrings Designed by Carolee Prince), 1964, which the NGA also owns. The institution declined to speculate on why Horn’s name was left out. Perhaps it’s because she wasn’t as famous as Buggs, who graced the cover of Freddie Roach‘s 1964 album Brown Sugar, or as close to the photographer as Brath, his sister-in-law. Both were also part of Brathwaite’s troupe of Black models, known as the Grandassa Models.
Horn died in 2002. Earlier this year, a cousin of her son, Zane Horn, encountered Brathwaite’s snapshot of Horn at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, which was hosting the NGA exhibition “Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955–1985.”
The cousin sent him a quick pic. Zane confirmed the woman in the photo was his mother, who left Mobile after graduating from high school and studying at community college to pursue a modeling career in New York. There, she worked with Grace Del Marco Modeling Agency, one of America’s first firms to represent Black models, according to materials Zane posted online. “I would imagine at the age of 19 or 20, she must have been scared,” he told FOX10. “Could you imagine seeing the subway for the first time coming from Mobile?”
Next, Zane noticed his mother’s name missing from the wall text. He gathered materials to prove she was the sitter and sent them to the NGA, which honored Horn’s legacy by renaming the work.
Now, Horn features in advertisements for the final edition of “Photography and the Black Arts Movement,” on view at the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson through November 8. Her face graces the streets of the city, just under four hours from where she grew up.
“To see something like this, to get recognition after all these years, when they told her her legs was too skinny, but now she’s in the National Archives forever in Washington, D.C.,” Zane told FOX10. “Go figure.”