New York: By the author, (1980). SIGNED first edition - A book which was the culmination of a series of photographs Barboza created between 1975-1980, with the publication of this funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The title refers both the black border around each photograph, which gives a unity to the book, and to the fact that most, although not all, portraits are of African Americans, of writers, artists and musicians working on the edge (or on the border) "What sets these photographs apart, and gives them their durable vitality, is their innovative use of lighting and backgrounds. . Barboza turns the dark distorted forms into expressive echoes of the sitters. Underneath setups create shadows that loom above and behind Normal Lewis and the World Saxophone Quartet, while side arrangements turn the shadows into repetitions and echoes, doubling Amiri Baraka, and James Baldwin. Barboza then went on to add a bit of blur to some of the portraits, creating the appearance of back and forth motion or elusive ghosting to Ntozake Shange and Pharoah Sanders. The backdrops that he created and employed were equally unorthodox. Rolls of hanging paper were cut, slashed, and sliced, creating abstract patters of squiggles, lines, and openings, and then overpainted with expressive dashes and arcs of silvery spray paint. . So James Van Der Zee is surrounded by a whorling swirl of shining light, Toukie Smith shares the stage with snake-like back-and-forth forms." (Loring Knoblauch, Collectordaily) . Includes poetry by Ntozake Shange and Steven Barboza and brief handwritten captions under each portrait. SIGNED on the title page by Barboza and numbered AB/72, dated 1981. Square format, unpaginated (32 pp)