Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by The Art Newspaper, an editorial partner of CNN Style.

CNN
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Kwame Brathwaite, the pioneering activist and photographer whose work helped define the aesthetics of the “Black is Beautiful” movement of the 1960s and beyond, died on April 1, aged 85.

His son, Kwame Brathwaite, Jr, announced his father’s death in an Instagram post that read in part, “I am deeply saddened to share that my Baba, the patriarch of our family, our rock and my hero has transitioned.”

Brathwaite’s work has been the subject of resurgent interest from curators, historians and collectors in recent years, and his first major institutional retrospective, which was organized by the Aperture Foundation, made its debut in 2019 at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles before touring the country.

Brathwaite was born in 1938 to Barbadian immigrants, in what he referred to as “the People’s Republic of Brooklyn” in New York, though his family moved from there to Harlem and then to the South Bronx when Brathwaite was 5 years old. He attended the School of Industrial Art (now the High School of Art and Design) and, according to profiles of Brathwaite in T Magazine and Vice, was drawn to photography by two moments. The first was in August of 1955, when a 17-year-old Brathwaite encountered David Jackson’s haunting photograph of a brutalized Emmett Till in his open casket. The second was in 1956, when — after he and his brother Elombe co-founded the African Jazz Arts Society and Studios (AJASS) — Brathwaite saw a young man taking photos in a dark jazz club without the use of a flash, and his mind became alight with possibility.

Using a Hasselblad medium-format camera, Brathwaite attempted to do the same, learning to work with limited light in a manner that enhanced the visual narrative of his imagery. He would soon also develop a darkroom technique that enriched and deepened how Black skin would appear in his photography, honing the practice in a small darkroom in his Harlem apartment. Brathwaite went on to photograph jazz legends performing throughout the 1950s and ’60s, including Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk and others.

“You want to get the feeling, the mood that you’re experiencing when they’re playing,” Brathwaite told Aperture Magazine in 2017. “That’s the thing. You want to capture that.”

By the early 1960s, alongside the rest of AJASS, Brathwaite began using his photography and organizing prowess to consciously push back against whitewashed, Eurocentric beauty standards. The group came up with the concept of the Grandassa Models, young Black women whom Brathwaite would photograph, celebrating and accentuating their features. In 1962, AJASS organized “Naturally ’62”, a fashion show held in a Harlem club called the Purple Manor and featuring the models. The show would go on to be held regularly until 1992. In 1966, Brathwaite married his wife Sikolo, a Grandassa Model whom he had met on the street the year prior when he asked if he could take her portrait. The two remained married for the rest of Brathwaite’s life.

By the 1970s, Brathwaite’s focus on jazz shifted to other forms of popular Black music. In 1974, he traveled to Africa with the Jackson Five to document their tour, also photographing the historic “Rumble in the Jungle” boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in what’s now the Democratic Republic of Congo that same year. Commissions in this era also saw Brathwaite photographing Nina Simone, Stevie Wonder, Sly and the Family Stone, Bob Marley and other music legends.

Throughout the ensuing decades, Brathwaite continued to explore and develop his mode of photography, all through the lens of the “Black is Beautiful” ethos. In 2016, Brathwaite joined the roster of Philip Martin Gallery in Los Angeles, and he was continuing to photograph commissions as recently as 2018, when he shot artist and stylist Joanne Petit-Frère for The New Yorker.

T Magazine’s 2021 profile, published on the occasion of Brathwaite’s retrospective traveling to the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas, noted that the photographer’s health was failing such that he was unable to be interviewed for the article. A separate exhibition, “Kwame Brathwaite: Things Well Worth Waiting For,” is currently on view at the Art Institute of Chicago, where it will remain until July 24.

Top image: Kwame Brathwaite, “Untitled (Sikolo Brathwaite, Orange Portrait),” 1968

Editor’s Note: Call to Earth is a CNN editorial series committed to reporting on the environmental challenges facing our planet, together with the solutions. Rolex’s Perpetual Planet initiative has partnered with CNN to drive awareness and education around key sustainability issues and to inspire positive action.

CNN
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Originally a term used by trophy hunters in Africa, the “Big Five” described the animals most challenging to shoot and kill: the lion, elephant, leopard, rhino, and buffalo. Nowadays, it is more loosely used to refer to some of Africa’s largest and most iconic animals.

However, British photographer Graeme Green has reclaimed the narrative, creating a global “New Big Five” for wildlife photography. In 2021, 50,000 people around the world voted for the five animals they would most like to photograph, or see photographed, in the wild. Five animals were crowned the winners: the elephant, polar bear, lion, gorilla and tiger.

This week, sees the publication of “The New Big 5” photography book, which features images of those animals and other at-risk wildlife, from photography legends such as Ami Vitale, Steve McCurry and Paul Nicklen, and essays from famous conservationists and activists including like Jane Goodall and Paula Kahumbu.

Green says that the book celebrates wildlife and is a global call to action on issues impacting wildlife, including habitat loss, poaching, pollution and climate change.

Green was on assignment in Botswana at least a decade ago when he came up with the idea for a project to encourage people to “shoot with a camera, not a gun,” he says.

“I thought this would be a way to get people really focusing on wildlife, thinking about the wildlife they love, thinking about the animals that are at risk.”

In total, the book includes the work of 144 globally renowned wildlife photographers from Ecuador to India. Curating the images took nearly two years of work, says Green.

“I think these are some of the most beautiful and creative images that I’ve seen put together in one book,” says Green. “These are the species that we are at risk of losing.”

According to the UN, nature is declining at an unprecedented rate, with around one million of the planet’s animal and plant species facing extinction. The “New Big 5,” all of which are threatened, act as ambassadors for what is happening in the natural world, says Green.

As well as being a powerful reminder of what we stand to lose, the book also points people towards potential solutions. Featured essays explore the benefits of rewilding and the importance of indigenous communities in conservation.

A chapter on endangered species from bees to blue whales illustrates the alarming threat climate change poses to animals outside of the “New Big 5.” “That’s only the tip of the iceberg – I could have included thousands of pictures because that’s how serious the situation is,” says Green.

Jane Goodall, a leading conservationist who also wrote the afterword to the book, said in a press release that “we have a window of time during which we can start to heal some of the harm we have inflicted on the natural world, but only if we get together and take action now.

“I hope the photos will lead people into the wonderful worlds of these iconic species. Then, perhaps, other people will become involved in helping to create a world where wildlife can flourish for future generations to enjoy,” she said.

“The New Big 5: A Global Photography Project For Endangered Wildlife,” by Graeme Green, published by Earth Aware Editions, is on sale from April 4, 2023.

CNN
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With his surname, you could say that David Cannon was predestined for a career behind the lens.

Upon receiving the PGA of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award in Photojournalism in May, the 67-year-old was lauded for his “technical mastery and artistic proficiency.”

Yet while his first professional camera was a Canon, the Englishman’s journey to becoming one of the world’s leading sports photographers was anything but fated: he never even had any formal training.

Born in Sussex, Cannon was a talented golfer in his youth, boasting a handicap of one. Competing at a host of amateur tournaments, he finished eighth at the British Youths Golf Championship in 1974 and played alongside a young Nick Faldo at the following year’s tournament.

But sharing the fairways with the future six-time major winner extinguished any hopes Cannon had of a professional playing career.

“When I played with him [Faldo], it was like ‘Oh sh*t, I’m not even in the same league,’” he told CNN Sport. “He was just something else.”

Needing a job to cover the lack of financial reward in amateur golf, Cannon worked at a nylon sheet company, but after four years was yearning for a change of pace. When an impromptu conversation with family friend Neville Chadwick, a photographer at the Leicester News Service, offered the chance to snap some local sporting events, Cannon was all in.

Selling his car to fund a small telephoto lens and a camera – naturally, a Canon AE-1 – soon after he was sitting in a rugby stadium for a New Zealand Tour match in November 1979.

Related story: Golfing legend Tom Watson recalls his classic Open at St Andrews

The 24-year-old was armed with just two tips which have served as the basis of his craft ever since: “Focus on the eyes and fill the frame.”

“I was off, that was it. The lightbulb switched on,” Cannon said. “Playing golf suddenly took a massive back seat and every spare minute I had was buying cameras with spare money, taking pictures, going to games.”

In 1983, having covered everything from the Commonwealth Games in Australia to FIFA World Cup qualifiers in Honduras, he joined the esteemed AllSport photography agency. Though acquired by Getty Images in 1998, Cannon has effectively worked there ever since, specializing in golf to quickly become one of the most recognizable names in the field.

“I’ve loved every minute of it,” he said, and there have certainly been a lot of minutes to love.

Cannon has covered over 700 events and almost 200 men’s and women’s majors, according to an interview with the Ryder Cup, the biennial event he has worked at 17 times.

Cannon’s eye-watering estimates of his career stats: 3.4 million frames shot, 2.6 million miles flown, 115 countries visited, 5,000 nights slept in hotels and 13,000 miles of golf courses walked.

Yet Cannon insists it’s a necessary commitment. While sports like football will offer photographers – at the very least – the opportunity to snap celebrations almost every match, the less dynamic nature of golf can make for slim pickings.

“You can go six months at least – probably two years – without getting a fantastic final freeze picture,” he explained.

“Golf is very slow. People don’t realize how physical it is to photograph golf. You can walk 25,000 paces in a day, and all you’re getting is individual shots of golfers hitting the ball and nothing very interesting if they’re down on fairways all the time.”

Fortunately for Cannon, his career has coincided with some of golf’s most iconic players, many of whom he has come to know personally.

Keeping in touch with Faldo, he became good friends with Ernie Els and got to know Greg Norman – a trio with 12 major wins between them – and had a front row seat to the peak of the Tiger Woods era at the turn of the century.

Related story: Swedish golf’s rising star hopes history-making win will be watershed moment for women’s game

Photographing Rory McIlroy and newly crowned US Open champion Matt Fitzpatrick since they were amateurs, he has had the joy of following their journeys from the grassroots to lifting some of golf’s biggest titles.

Yet one name stands above all others: Seve Ballesteros. “Never meet your heroes,” the adage goes, but Cannon not only had the joy of snapping his all-time sporting idol, he also became a close friend.

A portrait of the legendary Spaniard captured near his home in Pedreña in 1996 remains one of Cannon’s most beloved pictures. And his shots of the five-time major champion’s iconic fist pump celebration at St. Andrews en route to a 1984 Open win are some of the most enduring images of Ballesteros, who died from brain cancer in 2011.

“It’s probably the most defining picture of my career,” Cannon said. “Of a moment, that’s my favorite.”

When Cannon took that photo, his 36-exposure camera afforded him just 25 pictures to choose from the whole sequence. Today, he would have five more pictures to choose from in a single second. Yet while technology has changed dramatically, the principles of sports photography have not.

Cannon was reminded of one of these guiding rules when – caddying for his professional golfer son Chris – he overanalyzed a swing from three holes earlier.

“‘Dad, that’s one thing you’ve got to learn, there’s a 10 second rule in golf,’” Cannon recalls his son saying. “’Ten seconds after you’ve hit the shot, you cannot get it back, you can’t do anything about it, you’ve got to put it out of your mind.’

“That rule works exactly the same in photography. If you miss it, you can’t go back and get it. If you’re at a sporting event, it’s never going to happen again. I find that quite a useful rule.”

One of the craft’s most important skills is to preemptively sense a story or moment and move to prepare accordingly. It’s easier said than done on courses spanning miles of fairway, with multiple games taking place at once, but the advice can offer great rewards.

These were reaped in abundance by Cannon at the Alfred Dunhill Cup in 1999 through his shot of basketball icon Michael Jordan and Spanish golfer Sergio Garcia engaged in a footrace across the St. Andrews fairways, once described as “the greatest golf photo of all time” in Golf Digest.

Overhearing Jordan and Garcia goading each other on the first tee, Cannon decided to stay out and track the duo past the third hole, the point at which the newspaper photographers – reluctant to trek any further from the clubhouse – decided to head back in.

“I heard Jordan say to Garcia, ‘Do you want a running race, boy?’” Cannon recalled.

“It was really good fun to follow them that day, and from that moment onwards, I walked a couple hundred yards ahead of them all the time.”

It is the sort of know-how that has kept Cannon at the top of his field for over four decades. Not bad for someone with no formal training.