The first black photographer in the Farm Security Administration, the first journalist to make a reportage on a Harlem gang (1948), the first to join the staff photographers of Life, the first African American director to succeed in Hollywood (Shaft, 1971): the pioneering dimension of his life and work is exemplary. A volcanic figure, he was a great portraitist, an acute narrator of reality, a witness to social change, a spokesman for the new black leaders and for the struggles against segregation and for civil rights in his country and the world. Born in 1912 in Fort Scott, Kansas, amid poverty and segregation, and self-taught, he joined the FSA in 1941, then alternated fashion work, above all for Vogue, with social photojournalism. "Look at me, listen to me. Try to understand my struggle against your racism. It is not too late to try to live together, in peace, under these troubled skies."