Soul City: Oakland, U.S.A. by Light, Ken

Soul City: Oakland, U.S.A. (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781597147316)

Vendor: Ken Light
Product type: Books
Format: Hardcover
$50.00
$50.00
$50.00
Subtotal: $50.00
Soul City: Oakland, U.S.A. by Light, Ken

Soul City: Oakland, U.S.A.

$50.00
Soul City: Oakland, U.S.A. by Light, Ken

Soul City: Oakland, U.S.A.

$50.00
Format: Hardcover
Description
Description
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Uncovered after 50 years, an absorbing and illuminating photographic archive of Black West Oakland in the 1970s.

In 1974 Ken Light, a young underground photographer recently arrived in California, was encouraged by residents of West Oakland to document daily life in the neighborhood. A white activist building relationships in a major Black community, Light was invited into homes and churches, flagged down on the street for impromptu portraits. The resulting images, taken over two years, ended up unseen in archives for half a century. Now made public for the first time in Soul City, they form a stunning and historically important archive of Black life in the 1970s. These photographs illuminate the deep pride running through West Oakland, despite the formidable attempts of local governments and agencies to tear the neighborhood apart. Soul City presents the everyday experiences and emotions of West Oaklanders: hard work, love, determination, resistance, humor, delight. Including over 120 images, and featuring a foreword by celebrated author and longtime Oakland resident Ishmael Reed, Soul City is a deeply absorbing and enlightening contribution to Black history.



Author: Ken Light
ISBN-10: 1597147311
ISBN-13: 9781597147316
Publisher: Heyday Books
Language: English
Published: 09/22/2026
Pages: 160
Format: Hardcover
By Ken Light
By Ken Light
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Ken Light has worked as a documentary photographer and filmmaker for over fifty years, focusing on social issues facing America. His books include Course of the Empire, What's Going On? 1969-1974, Valley of Shadows and Dreams, Witness in Our Time, and Picturing Resistance. His work has been presented in over 250 exhibitions worldwide, and he is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts photographers' fellowships, a National Endowment for the Arts survey grant, and the Dorothea Lange Fellowship. Light is the Reva and David Logan Professor of Photojournalism at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Visit his website at kenlight.com.

Ishmael Reed is an acclaimed multifaceted writer and author of ten novels, including Flight to Canada and Mumbo Jumbo, as well as plays and collections of essays and poetry. He was nominated for a National Book Award in both poetry and prose in 1972. Conjure, a volume of poetry, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and his New and Collected Poems: 1964-2006 received a Gold Medal from the Commonwealth Club of California. Reed has also received a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Blues Song Writer of the Year award from the West Coast Blues Hall of Fame, a Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the National Institute for Arts and Letters, and a MacArthur Fellowship. Reed taught at the University of California, Berkeley, for thirty-five years and currently lives in Oakland, California.

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