Roland Charles; Photographed Black Life

Roland Charles, a photographer and curator who founded the Black Photographers Assn. of California and ran the influential Black Gallery in the Crenshaw district for more than a decade, has died.

Charles died Friday of complications from a heart attack suffered while jogging in Pan Pacific Park on April 27. He was 61.

Born near New Orleans, Charles came to Southern California in the early 1960s after serving in the Air Force. He found work in the aerospace industry, but left it after a friend gave him a camera in the early 1970s. He was immediately hooked on photography. His passion for taking pictures soon bloomed into a successful freelance career, with Charles shooting record album covers and taking jobs for celebrity reporters like Rona Barrett.

As his interest in the medium grew, he felt the need to present and preserve the photography of established and emerging photographers. With that in mind, he founded the Black Photographers Assn. of California, a nonprofit educational institution, in 1984. Two years later, he created the Black Gallery, which provided exhibition space in the Crenshaw district.

The gallery proved to be a mecca for artists needing a place to exhibit their work or improve their photographic skills. Over the years, the gallery offered a wealth of photo technique and development workshops, photo contests and round-table discussions featuring prominent local and visiting photographers.

As a photographer, Charles worked to offer positive images of black life.

“The media primarily focuses on the negative aspects--crime and violence--without any understanding of the community, of people that are hard-working and honest, and our image was suffering as a result of that,” Charles said in an interview with The Times several years ago.

To foster a better understanding of black life, Charles came up with the idea for “Life in a Day of Black L.A. The Way We See It,” an exhibition of more than 100 photographs taken by 10 black photographers, which was shown at a several locations in Los Angeles in the early 1990s.

That exhibition, which was later turned into a book, traveled to Europe and was well received in such countries as Germany and England where images of black life often were presented in the context of crisis situations.

“People were amazed,” Charles told The Times. “The only images they had of blacks in Los Angeles came over the news: boys with their hands up against a wall, wearing rollers in their hair, gangbangers.”

Charles was a founding board member of the Jazz Photographers Assn. and Photo/Friends of the Los Angeles Public Library.

The Black Gallery closed two years ago, but Charles kept its legacy going on a Web site: https://www.blackphotographers.org.

He is survived by his wife, Deborah, and a daughter, Roshawn Hawley. Funeral arrangements are incomplete.