[ID Photo: P. H. Polk's intimate Portrait of Aaron Douglas exemplifies his use of the shadow side technique. During the '30s, when the photograph was taken, Douglas was considered by such notables as Alain Locke and W. E. B. Du Bois to be the leading black artist in the United States. Although Polk, Tuskegee's official photographer, was often called upon to photograph important personalities, his images generally de-emphasized the celebrity status of his sitters in favor of capturing what he described in 1979 as "the picture that I felt within myself." Thus, Polk's Portrait of Aaron Douglas does not focus on Douglas's notoriety as the leading Harlem Renaissance artist; instead it seems to celebrate the quiet demeanor, dignified carriage, soft-spoken intelligence of the artist as a man. (http://www.driskellcenter.umd.edu/narratives/exhibition/sec2/polk_p_01.htm)] Aaron Douglas (May 26, 1899 – Feb. 3, 1979[); African-American painter, illustrator and arts educator. He was a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance. ...In the film Hidden Heritage: The Roots of Black American Painting, David C. Driskell—an artist and a leading educator and scholar of African American art—discussed Aaron Douglas' role in art history: "Douglas is the leading painter of the [Harlem] Renaissance movement. A pioneering Africanist, he accepted the legacy of the ancestral arts of Africa and developed his own original style, geometric symbolism. At a time when it was unpopular to dignify the black image in white America, Douglas refused to compromise and see blacks as anything less than a proud and majestic people." Best represented by black-and-white drawings with black silhouetted figures, as well as by portraits, landscapes, and murals, Douglas' art fused modernism with ancestral African images, including fetish motifs, masks, and artifacts. His work celebrates African American versatility and adaptability, depicting people in a variety of... (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Douglas) undefined

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