In the late 1970s Tony Gleaton was immersed in the glossy world of New York fashion photography, aspiring to craft images for major magazines. "I used to live and die between the pages of British Vogue," he once recalled with chagrin.
But around 1980, he pitched his glamorous career and hit the road, beginning an odyssey that exposed him to a different conception of beauty and what it meant to be black.
First he hitchhiked through the West, photographing African American rodeo riders and Native American ranch hands. Then, after hearing about a century-old enclave of blacks not far from Acapulco, Mexico, he headed south of the border, shocking people when he -- a light-skinned African American with green eyes --said he was looking for "blacks like me.