Billy Abernathy

Photographer Billy (Fundi) Abernathy was known for creating images that defined Black confidence, elegance, and style. This work extended to his collaborations with his wife, Sylvia (Laini) Abernathy, with whom he designed album covers for Delmark Records in the 1960s. Around that time, the poet and author Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) encountered Abernathy’s photographs of Chicago and proposed a book project that would combine his poetry with Abernathy’s images. The resulting collaboration, In Our Terribleness (Some Elements and Meaning in Black Style), was designed by Laini and published in 1970. In 1971 the New York Times hailed the book as “an example of the new direction that black art is taking.”

A photograph by Abernathy of Sarah Vaughn was included in the Jazz section of the Wall of Respect, an outdoor mural located at 43rd Street and Langley Avenue in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood that was completed in 1967 and destroyed in 1971. Created by 21 collaborating artists, the mural featured groupings of Black heroes and heroines across seven sections.

His work was included in the exhibition and book Two Schools: New York and Chicago Contemporary African-American Photography of the 60s and 70s (1986). Abernathy’s photographs were also featured in the Art Institute’s 2018 exhibition Never a Lovely So Real: Photography and Film in Chicago, 1950–1980 and in the 2025 digital catalogue dedicated to the exhibition.