Arthur Jafa Biography
Arthur Jafa is an American video artist and cinematographer who was born in Tupelo, Mississippi and brought up in Clarksdale, Mississippi, United States of America. He is widely known for his work on Dash’s ‘Daughters of the Dust’ and his seven-minute video essay ‘Love Is the Message, The Message Is Death’.
Arthur’s work on Daughters of the Dust won him a “Best Cinematography” Award at Sundance, and his video essay Love Is the Message is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the High Museum of Art.
10 Quick Facts About Arthur Jafa
- Name: Arthur Jafa Fielder
- Age: 63 Years (As of 2023)
- Birthday: 30 November
- Zodiac Sign: Sagittarius
- Height: Average
- Nationality: American
- Occupation: Video Artist and Cinematographer
- Marital Status: Single
- Salary: Under Review
- Net worth: $1 Million – $5 Million
Arthur Jafa Age
Jafa is 63 years old as of 2023, he was born on 30 November 1960, in Tupelo, Mississippi, United States. He celebrates his birthday on 30 November every year and his birth sign is Sagittarius.
Arthur Jafa Height
Jafa stands at an average height. He appears to be quite tall in stature if his photos, relative to his surroundings, are anything to go by. However, details regarding his actual height and other body measurements are currently not publicly available. We will update this section when the information is available.
Arthur Jafa Education
Jafa attended Howard University where he pursued architecture and film before moving to Atlanta, Georgia.
Arthur Jafa Family
Jafa was born and raised by his parents in Tupelo. Our efforts to find out more about his family came to no avail as no such information is publicly available. Thus, the identity of Arthur’s parents is still unclear. It is also not known if he has any siblings. We will update this section once this information is available.
Arthur Jafa Wife
Jafa was previously married to his ex-wife Julie Dash, an American film director, writer, and producer. The couple tied the knot in 1983, but later separated, after collaborating on the Dash’s ‘Daughters of the Dust’.
Arthur Jafa Children
Jafa and his ex-wife Julie Dash have one child together, a daughter named N’Zinga Dash, who was born in 1984.
Arthur Jafa Salary
Details about Jafa’s salary are not yet disclosed. However, information about how much he makes will be updated as soon as it is available.
Arthur Jafa Net Worth
Jafa’s net worth is estimated to be between $1 million and $5 million dollars. This includes his assets, money and income. His primary source of income is his career as a video artist and cinematographer. Through his various sources of income, Arthur has been able to accumulate a good fortune but prefers to lead a modest lifestyle.
Arthur Jafa Measurements and Facts
Here are some interesting facts and body measurements you should know about Arthur.

Arthur Jafa Wiki
- Full Names: Arthur Jafa Fielder
- Popular As: Arthur
- Gender: Male
- Occupation / Profession: Video Artist and Cinematographer
- Nationality: American
- Race / Ethnicity: Afro-American
- Religion: Not Known
- Sexual Orientation: Straight
Arthur Jafa Birthday
- Age / How Old?: 63 years (2023)
- Zodiac Sign: Sagittarius
- Date of Birth: 30 November 1960
- Place of Birth: Tupelo, Mississippi, USA
- Birthday: 30 November
Arthur Jafa Body Measurements
- Body Measurements: Not Available
- Height / How Tall?: Average
- Weight: Moderate
- Eye Color: Dark Brown
- Hair Color: Salt and Pepper
- Shoe Size: Not Available
Arthur Jafa Family and Relationship
- Father (Dad): Not Known
- Mother: Not Known
- Siblings (Brothers and Sisters): Not Known
- Marital Status: Single
- Wife/Spouse: Julie Dash (m.1983; separated 1984)
- Dating / Boyfriend: Single
- Children: Daughter(s) (N’Zinga Dash) Sons (None)
Arthur Jafa Net Worth and Salary
- Net Worth: $1 Million – $5 Million
- Salary: Under Review
- Source of Income: Video Artist and Cinematographer
Arthur Jafa Career
Arthur Jafa has shown at the Hirshhorn, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Julia Stoschek Collection, just as numerous others. His job as a cinematographer with chiefs, for example, Julie Dash and Spike Lee have been prominent, with his work on Daughters of the Dust (1991) winning the “Best Cinematography” Award at Sundance.
His seven-minute video article Love Is the Message, The Message Is Death is in the accumulations of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the High Museum of Art.
Set to Kanye West’s tune “Ultralight Beam”, the work comprises of a progression of discovered pictures and video clasps portraying a scope of Black American encounters since the beginning.
Among numerous different clasps investigating African American life and flexibility, the video article compares accounts of police viciousness and film from the Civil Rights Movement with clasps of Black masterfulness, popular culture, festivity, and innovativeness.
Jafa additionally has dealt with various music recordings and was outstandingly the chief of photography on recordings for Solange’s Don’t Touch My Hair and Cranes in the Sky. He was incorporated into the 2017 ArtReview Power 100 rundown.
Arthur Jafa helped to establish TNEG alongside Malik Sayeed, a “film studio whose objective is to make a dark film as socially, socially, and financially key to the 21st century as was dark music to the twentieth century”.
TNEG has delivered various works, for example, Dreams Are Colder Than Death and the music video for Jay-Z’s tune 4:44. In 2018, Jafa discharged the roughly forty-moment long video article entitled The White Album, which uses discovered video cuts from CC TV, mobile phones, documentaries, and more to investigate whiteness and bigotry in the United States of America. His work is spoken to by Gavin Brown’s Enterprise. He was granted the Golden Lion for best craftsman at the 2019 Venice Biennale for his film “The White Album”.
Arthur Jafa Love Is The Message
Love Is The Message, The Message Is Death is another video by craftsman, executive, and grant-winning cinematographer Arthur Jafa. Set to the burning highs and lows of Kanye West’s gospel-motivated hip-jump track, “Ultralight Beam,” Love Is The Message is a marvelous combination of discovered film that follows African-American personality through an immense range of contemporary symbolism.
From photos of social liberties pioneers watermarked with “Getty Images” to helicopter perspectives on the LA Riots to an influx of bodies moving to “The Dougie,” the carefully altered 7-minute video suspends watchers in a swelling, passionate montage that is a demonstration of Jafa’s significant capacity to mine, examine, and recover media’s illustrative modes and methodologies.
Close by fragments of well-known Black symbols and noteworthy occasions are likewise scenes including lesser-known figures: mysterious bodies in different conditions of rapture and gloom.
Extracts from Jafa’s own staggering narrative film, Dreams are Colder than Death (2012) arches an individual measurement to symbolism for the most part drawn from news media, TV and the Internet.
In this pointed incorporation, Jafa unveils the two his helplessness and expert as a craftsman—contributing to the immense and complex territory of Black portrayal. While Love Is The Message piercingly typifies the craftsman’s longing to make a film that “repeats the power,
Magnificence and distance of Black Music,” it is additionally an update that the aggregate huge number characterizing Blackness is included solitary people, complex personalities and their untouchable contrasts.
Arthur Jafa The White Album
The White Album is Jafa’s fourth film investigating America’s history of race, power, and savagery, following Dreams Are Colder than Death and Apex (both 2013), just as Love Is the Message, The Message Is Death.
The last is a seven-minute overview of dark history, its incredible triumphs, and titanic misfortunes soundtracked to a hacked and-screwed version of Kanye West’s rap-gospel “Ultralight Beam.” It made Jafa, after about three many years of filmmaking, a star in the craftsmanship world.
That late-profession unmistakable quality was a genuine triumph for what Jafa has supported: the non-business investigation of darkness, in what he calls “Dark Cinema.” Other devotees incorporate Kahlil Joseph, Malik Sayeed, Bradford Young,Terence Nance, and Ja’Tovia Gary, among others—all craftsmen who have made motion pictures that, as per Jafa, “imitate the power, excellence, and distance of dark music.”
They are to a great extent exploratory and delighted movies, free of the Hollywood generalizations, adages, and conventional story structures found in the wayward, supposed New Black Film Renaissance that Jafa has rebuked throughout the years for its limited, standard intrigue. (A valid example: Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, of which the craftsman was not a fan.)
In this vein, Jafa says The White Album “isn’t done and will change at regular intervals.” It’s a motion that catches that it is so hard to “put whiteness under the focal point,” and demonstrates that Jafa is less inspired by custom or the manner in which things have recently been done in movies (or historical centers).
He is taken by the broad, pliable potential outcomes of the computerized video record that enables him to play perpetually with substance, however structure.
Arthur Jafa Music Videos
- Daughters of the Dust
- Love is the Message, The Message is Death
- The White Album
- Seven Songs for Malcolm X
- The Darker Side of Black
- Crooklyn
- A Litany for Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde
- Rouch in Reverse
- W.E.B. DuBois: A Biography in Four Voices
- Bamako Sigi-Kan
- Conakry Kas
- Shadows of Liberty
- Roomieloverfriends
- Don’t Touch My Hair
- Cranes in the Sky
- The Start-Up
- Dreams Are Colder Than Death
- Florida Water
- In The Morning
- Killing Me Softly: The Roberta Flack Story
Arthur Jafa Book
- A Series of Utterly Improbable
- Yet Extraordinary Renditions
- Kerry James Marshall: A Creative Convening
Frequently Asked Questions About Arthur Jafa
Arthur is an acclaimed video artist and cinematographer who is widely known for his work on ‘Daughters of the Dust’ and ‘Love Is the Message, The Message Is Death’.
Arthur is an American national born on 30th November 1960, in Tupelo, Mississippi.
Arthur stands at an average height, he has not shared his height with the public. His/her height will be listed once we have it from a credible source.
No, Arthur was previously married to his ex-wife Julie Dash. The couple tied the knot in 1983, but later separated.
Arthur has an approximate net worth of $1 million and $5 million. This amount has been accrued from his leading roles in the entertainment industry.
Details about Arthur’s salary are not yet disclosed. However, information about how much he makes will be updated as soon as it is available.
Because of security reasons, Arthur has not shared his precise location of residence. We will update this information if we get the location and images of his house.
Arthur is alive and in good health. There have been no reports of him being sick or having any health-related issues.
Arthur is still an active participant in the creative entertainment industry, he is a cast member of Killing Me Softly: The Roberta Flack Story.
Arthur Jafa Contacts
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