Photographer Chester Higgins has spent more than six decades creating images that honor the presence, history, and achievements of people of African descent. Raised in rural southern Alabama during the height of the Civil Rights movement, he discovered photography as a student at Tuskegee University, a path that would eventually lead to a nearly forty-year career as a photographer for The New York Times. Chester Higgins: Shared Memories, an exhibition spanning six decades of his work, is on view at Bruce Silverstein Gallery in New York through June 20, 2026. We spoke with him about what it means to respect your subject and tell their story in a way that is ‘unique, embracing, and nonjudgmental.’
Do you feel this exhibition is especially relevant right now? If so, why?
‘Absolutely. Fundamentally, my work is about identity and celebrating the search for my own African Spirit, the Spirit in life, and sharing that with others. For most people, my view of African people is unique, embracing, and nonjudgmental. A positive and loving message about any people is a balm to the daily confusion and miseducation we are subjected to.’
During your time at The New York Times, your work contributed to changes in how Black Americans were represented. What are some ways in which you helped bring about change that others could learn from?
‘The reason that I became a publishing photographer was because I wanted to change the visual diet from exclusive negativity when the subject is my people to include a more balanced human personality. I’d like to think that my daily visual representation of my people broadened the way they were perceived.
‘I tried to look at poverty differently, without the lens of class, pity, or exclusion. In all of my images, regardless of their economic and social situation, I try to focus on something much larger, like their humanity.
‘We, humans, have simple desires; we all want to be happy. But since we humans can be complicated and defective by nature, the road from where we start and where we end up, for some, can be an exhaustive struggle. But even in our struggles and differences, we are blessed that our common denominator is a creator who is generous to all of us. Regardless of who we are, we are all afforded air to breathe, water to drink, food to eat, and emotions to season our life experience. I worked to highlight universal experiences such as celebrations, ceremonies, families, struggles, enjoyment, and aging.’
What do you feel has been successfully reshaped with regard to representation, and what is still needing attention?
‘When I retired, the Managing Editor said that ‘I had changed the way the newspaper (meaning mostly white staffers) see Black people, that I expanded everyone’s horizon.’
‘The paper is made up of people, and a lack of imagination and understanding does not automatically mean racism when inattention could be the result of just narrow experiences.
‘I saw my job as the agent of expansion. It was a privilege to be able to place my images in the paper of record in front of America’s decision makers, giving them information that was not part of their usual experience, but using art to package my societal information into data that could be digested.’
“The photograph never lies about the photographer.” How have you seen this play out?
‘My statement is all about sentiment. As social beings, we process current reality through our lens of prior experiences, which determines our level of comfort with new information. If the new information facing us provokes fear or comfort, then that will color our decision of acceptance or rejection. If a photographer loves their subject, it is almost impossible to make a demeaning image of that subject. The reverse is also true. The photographer leaves their sociological contract in their photographs.
‘I first realized this discrepancy while a student at Tuskegee University, the day after participating in a political protest at the State Capitol in Montgomery, protesting the racist policies of George Wallace. The next day, photographs in the paper did not depict us students as American citizens petitioning the government, but instead showed us as potential arsonists, rapists, thugs, and thieves. To me, that was an important lesson on how what’s in the heart of the photographer can emerge in the flavor of their message about their subject.’
“My photos visualize the Signature of the Spirit as I look for the marriage between Nature and life.” Can you explain this process of “looking”? Does it come when you are making the picture or when you are going back through your work in the editing process?
‘At a very young age, I had an out-of-body experience that changed the way I perceive reality. I came away with the feeling that life or reality travels in parallels and is multi-layered. To me, this construction of Nature is supported by invisible forces with a constantly shifting quality. It made me conscious of the fact that most of the forces in Nature that we experience, we have no name for, and the presence of those underlying forces is not obvious and below the radar of our senses.
‘As an ortovert, I’ve harnessed my ego. In many ways, I accept that the Spirit is in charge and that the reality we experience is akin to a Marionette performance. In acknowledging natural behavior and appreciating that performance, I tend to look for the behind-the-scenes effects driving our visual reality. It is in the transitions between the Spirit world and the world of reality that I search for Signature of the Spirit where it reveals itself.’
