Irving Henry Webster Phillips Sr.

Irving Henry Webster Phillips Sr. (January 16, 1920 – November 22, 1993), was an African American photojournalist from Baltimore, Maryland.

Life and career In the summer of 1946, after serving in the European and African theatres of World War II, he became chief photographer at the Baltimore Afro-American, one of the nation's leading Black newspaper. He held this job, overseeing seven other photojournalists, till his retirement in 1972. Phillips Sr. covered local and national news events such as the 1963 March on Washington, five presidential elections, and Martin Luther King Jr.'s funeral, as well as taking photos of celebrities such as Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington and documenting ordinary Black lives in Baltimore. After retiring from the newspaper, Phillips took photographs for the NAACP. He died at Baltimore's Union Memorial Hospital on November 22, 1993, at the age of 73. In 2018, Baltimore City Hall hosted an exhibit of photos from the Phillips family archive, spanning the work of all three generations.