Famed African American Photographers Announce Worldwide Call for Photos "Photos from Home" for New Museum of the African Diaspora

Three thousand photographs needed for museum mosaic.

NEW YORK, NY (PRWEB) May 13, 2004-- Gordon Parks, Deborah Willis and Chester Higgins, three of Americas most celebrated African American photographers, are announcing an international call for photographs to help launch the new Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) set to open in San Francisco in the summer of 2005.

The photographers will announce details of the global photo call at a news conference on Tuesday, May 25 at 1 p.m. at The Studio Museum in Harlem, 144 West 125th Street in New York.

"We invite photographers around the globe, whether they are amateurs or professionals, to send us a photo to include in an exciting and unique mosaic at the new museum and thus honor the richness of humanity that has emerged from the African continent," said Parks, an award-winning photographer, author, composer and filmmaker who has donated four of his own photographs to the mosaic.

Photos, which will be collected at www.moadsf.org, will be considered for use in a mosaic mural three stories high entitled "The Girl from Ghana," by Chester Higgins, a staff photographer at The New York Times. More than 3,000 photographic images are needed for the construction of the mosaic mural and entries will be considered until 5 p.m. Pacific time August 31, 2004.

   The Museum of the African Diaspora, or "MoAD," will be located in the first three floors of a new $200 million St. Regis Hotel in downtown San Francisco, near the citys Museum of Modern Art and the Moscone Convention Center. In planning for more than a decade, MoAD will be dedicated to the art, culture, history and literature emanating from the African cradle of humanity that makes all humankind part of the African "diaspora," the dispersion of a people from their homeland.

Gordon Parks and Chester Higgins are honorary chairs of the photo call, with Deborah Willis, a professor, curator and author of "Reflections in Black," a History of Black Photographers from 1849 to the Present.

Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, MoAD board members Belva Davis and Pamela Joyner will attend the news conference, as well as trustees and staff of The Studio Museum in Harlem.

About the Studio Museum: The Studio Museum in Harlem is an art museum that has as its mission the collection, documentation, preservation, and interpretation of African American art and the artifacts of the African diaspora. The 35-year-old institution is located at:
144 W. 125th St., New York, N. Y. 10027.

To donate photos: Go to www.moadsf.org, or mail photos to: Museum of the African Diaspora, 90 New Montgomery Street, San Francisco, CA 94105. Photos will not be returned.