Akintola Hanif (born 1972) is an American photographer based in
Newark, New Jersey
Newark ( , ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey and the seat of Essex County and the second largest city within the New York metropolitan area.
Born in
Brooklyn, New York
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
, Hanif is a photographer who primarily creates portraits of marginalized and dispossessed people, especially people of color, in the tradition of
Jamel Shabazz
Jamel Shabazz (born 1960) is an African-American fashion, fine art, documentary and street style photographer. His work has been published in books, shown in exhibitions, and used in editorial magazine works. He was born in Brooklyn, New York. ...
,
Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon (May 15, 1923 – October 1, 2004) was an American fashion and portrait photographer. He worked for ''Harper's Bazaar'', ''Vogue'' and ''Elle'' specializing in capturing movement in still pictures of fashion, theater and danc ...
, or
Gordon Parks
Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks (November 30, 1912 – March 7, 2006) was an American photographer, composer, author, poet, and film director, who became prominent in U.S. documentary photojournalism in the 1940s through 1970s—particu ...
. He says his work is about "the souls of the misunderstood." Hanif opened his photo studio, Hycide, in 2009 and founded a photojournal by the same name in 2011. The journal is in the permanent collections of
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is a research library of the New York Public Library (NYPL) and an archive repository for information on people of African descent worldwide. Located at 515 Malcolm X Boulevard (Lenox Avenue) b ...
International Center for Photography
The International Center of Photography (ICP), at 79 Essex Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City, consists of a museum for photography and visual culture and a school offering an array of educational courses and programming. ...
, the
Newark Public Library
The Newark Public Library (NPL) is a public library system in Newark, New Jersey. The library system offers numerous programs and events to its diverse population. With eight different locations, the Newark Public Library serves as a Statewide Re ...
, and the
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
Museum of Contemporary Photography
The Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP) was founded in 1976 by Columbia College Chicago as the successor to the Chicago Center for Contemporary Photography. The museum houses a permanent collection as well as the Midwest Photographers Project ...
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
. He curated the exhibition, "Off White," at Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts in 2016.
In 2020 Hanif won a Creative Catalyst Artist Fellowship Grant from Newark Arts.
In 2017 Hanif suffered a debilitating stroke but continued his work.