Chester Higgins Jr. is an American photographer, who was a staff photographer with The New York Times for more than four decades, and whose work has notably featured the life and culture of people of African descent. 

Life and work

Higgins was born in Lexington, Kentucky, and grew up in New Brockton, Alabama. He attended Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University), where he was mentored by the school’s official photographer, P. H. Polk, and graduated in 1970 with a bachelor’s degree in business management. Higgins worked as a New York Times photographer from 1975 and exhibited in museums throughout the world.

In Before Genesis, Higgins narrates the story of the African beginnings of spirituality, antecedents of the Biblical world along the River Nile from the 6,000-foot high mountains of Kush (modern-day Ethiopia) through Nubia (Sudan) down to the ancient land of Kemet (Egypt).

Higgins is represented by the Peter Fetterman Gallery of Santa Monica, California.