Portugal

1947–1948

His first two books on photography appear

“Flash Photography” appears in 1947 and “Camera Portraits: Techniques and Principles of Documentary Portraiture” in 1948. From the late 1940s this second career as a writer will produce fifteen books.

1948

A photo essay on a Harlem gang leader brings him to Life

A photographic essay on a young Harlem gang leader wins him a staff job as photographer and writer at Life, America’s leading photo-magazine. He will stay there until 1972.

1948–1972

Photographs Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Barbra Streisand

In more than twenty years at Life he photographs fashion, sports, Broadway, poverty and racial segregation, as well as portraits of Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, Muhammad Ali and Barbra Streisand. Malcolm X asks him to be the godfather of his daughter Qubilah Shabazz.

1950

Returns to Fort Scott for Life

He returns to his hometown, Fort Scott, Kansas, where segregation persists, and documents conditions in the community and the lives of many of his eleven classmates from the segregated middle school. Life never publishes the project, which includes his commentary.

1950s

Consults on Hollywood productions

In the 1950s he works as a consultant on various Hollywood productions; he will later direct a series of documentaries on Black ghetto life commissioned by National Educational Television.