Between US slavery and contemporary times, photography has contributed richly to documenting not only race relations but also African American life. From the free black practitioners of the “‘new art’” ca. 1840s through their successors who documented the long civil rights movement, black photographers have conserved images of freedom struggle, racial progress, and American society.

The result is a crucial visual record. The pioneers customarily made photographs of prominent individuals, including clerics, white and black abolitionists, or Union army soldiers. In that tradition were photographers C.M. Battey of Tuskegee Institute and Addison N. Scurlock of Howard University. Scurlock's black-and-white photographs of Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, Mary McLeod Bethune, and others still appear in history books. Moreover, Scurlock, who operated his Washington, DC studio ca. 1911–64, photographed events for magazines like The Crisis. The 1920 census listed 608 blacks, 101 of them women, in photographic occupations.

Their numbers and opportunities enlarged over time. New York's Harlem Renaissance and black cultural production in urban centers stimulated public demand for studio photography, painters, and artistic designers. The 1930s and 1940s projects of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) and Office of War Information created more federal employment for African Americans; Gordon Parks began his famed career as an FSA photojournalist. Civil rights activism after the Brown decision increased the number of blacks among photojournalists working in the South. Also, the 1960s Black Arts Movement brought national attention to black photographers’ craft. During the 1980s–90s, the Smithsonian Institution sponsored major exhibitions of their works.