The collection of images used in this digital gallery come from this photographer named Robert Breck Chapman. He was a staff photographer employed by the City of Baltimore between 1971 and 2002. In addition to working for the Model Cities Agency, the Urban Services Agency (USA), and the Department of Housing, he was also the Mayor's office photographer for Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke. From Model Cities, Chapman joined the Cultural Arts Project (CAP) in July of 1974 whose director and founder Norman E. Ross paved the way for the AFRAM festival. The forerunners to AFRAM were the Bicentennial Mini-festivals that Cultural Arts held at Dunbar that Summer before the first AFRAM in 1976.
As well as photographing for CAP, the job entailed teaching an evening photography class at the New Dunbar High School along with fellow photographer from CAP, Wilbur Lawrence "Butch" Cooper Jr. from 1976 to 1983 and Butch continued the class after that. They both taught a dark room workshop and had students from a range of ages between adolescent to adults in film processing, printmaking, camera operation and composition.
In 1983 when he became the USA photographer, he continued to photograph events for CAP including AFRAM until 1993 when AFRAM was privatized. His background in photo journalism on the streets of Baltimore, while working in Model Cities, brought similar qualities on how he captured life at the AFRAM festival. An inspiration of Mr. Chapman by other photojournalistic photographers were artists such as Baltimore's, A. Aubrey Bodine, Eugene Smith, and Roy DeCarava, to name a few. Chapman photographed unobtrusively which enabled his photos to be candid, also, being aware of the environment . Chapman expressed his enthusiasm about being part of CAP that brought the arts back to the inner city offering classes in six neighborhood centers and the Eubie Blake Cultural Center at 409 N. Charles Street.
