Born, 1880. Died, 1936
Richard Samuel Roberts’ was a contemporary of James VanDerZee, though the two photographers lived and worked in different parts of the US. VanDerZee operated in and around the Harlem district of New York, while Roberts operated in Columbia, South Carolina. Roberts photographed the African Americans of his community, particularly those who had achieved degrees of affluence and economic stability in their lives. A significant number of Roberts’ portraits were brought together and published in an important document of his work and the times in which he lived, the book, A True Likeness: The Black South of Richard Samuel Roberts: 1920-1936. Fascinated by some of the book’s portraits of the economically secure, fashionable and assured African American middle class, the painter Eugene Palmer used a number of these portraits in his work of the mid 1990s.
Richard Samuel Roberts’ work was included in the exhibition Rhapsodies in Black: Art of the Harlem Renaissance, which toured to galleries in the UK and the USA in 1997 and 1998.
Catalogue relating to an exhibition, 1997
Bristol, United Kingdom
Washington D.C., United States of America
London, United Kingdom
Coventry, United Kingdom
San Francisco, United States of America