Chester Higgins

Many people think about photography as a way of stopping time, preserving what we are seeing in the moment the picture is made. But Chester Higgins uses his camera to search for the unseen and make it visible. He challenges what we think we know and asks us to see the spirit, giving visual definition to the lived human experience. Chester’s works are currently on view at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts as part two of a series of exhibitions showing images from the Black Photographers Annual, a 4-part publication that was inspired by the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 70s. Volume two was the first to include images made by earlier generations of black photographers, one of whom was P.H. Polk. Chester Higgins first encountered Polk’s work as a student at Tuskegee Institute, where Polk worked as the official photographer, and Chester brought Polk’s work to the attention of the publisher of the Black Photographer’s Annual. Both Polk and Higgins worked to create opportunities for the black community to see itself through the eyes of its own artists, rather than be contented with a view of itself presented by others.