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The National Portrait Gallery acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to Elders both past and present.

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Harry Belafonte, 1954

Dorothy Wilding

Harry Belafonte (b. 1927) is a Grammy award-winning singer who popularised calypso, a style of Afro-Caribbean music, with an international audience and starred in several films and Broadway shows. A supporter of the civil rights movement in the United States, he was a friend and confidant of Martin Luther King Jr, and has continued his social activism in a number of causes.

The portrait photographer Dorothy Wilding shot several beautiful photographs of the young Belafonte in her New York studio in February 1954, including this brooding and pensive image. It was a moment of rising stardom for the singer, yet he has since written in his autobiography My Song: A Memoir of Art, Race and Defiance (2011) that at the time he was grappling with his dual heritage: ‘My racial identity confused me still; I was black, yes, but West Indian, playing to white audiences – a cultural hybrid, in between.’

National Portrait Gallery, London Given by the photographer's sister, Susan Morton, 1976
© National Portrait Gallery, London

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The National Portrait Gallery acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to Elders past and present. We respectfully advise that this site includes works by, images of, names of, voices of and references to deceased people.

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