(This profile was originally published in the April 2009 issue of the CUAA newsletter)
Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe A’75 received the 1990 President’s Citation. She is a distinguished photographer, photojournalist, and writer.
During her junior year at The Cooper Union, Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe A’75 received a fellowship to travel to seven West African countries, photographing the people and customs she observed. The body of work that resulted helped her earn a full time position as a photojournalist at NBC.
Her photographic studies have addressed AIDS, the rural community off the coast of South Carolina on Daufuskie Island, South African apartheid, and the urban experience.
- Moutoussamy-Ashe’s published works include
- Viewfinders: Black Women Photographers, 1986;
- Songs of My People, 1992;
- Reflections In Black: A History of Black Photographers, 1840 to the Present, 2000;
- A Day In the Life of the American Woman, 2005 The 25 anniversary edition of Daufuskie Island: Photographs by Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, which won the 2008 ESSENCE Literary Award for Photography.
Jeanne’s work has been exhibited at The Smithsonian Institute, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, the African American Museum of Art, and The Museum of Modern Art. She is also the founder of www.ArthurAshe.org and the Arthur Ashe Learning Center, a nonprofit organization.