IRAQ PHOTOJOURNALISTS ON WAR

With previously unpublished photographs by an incredibly diverse group of the world’s top news photographers, Photojournalists on War presents a groundbreaking new visual and oral history of America’s nine-year conflict in the Middle East. Michael Kamber interviewed photojournalists from many leading news organizations, including Agence France-Presse, the Associated Press, the Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, Magnum, Newsweek, The New York Times, Paris Match, Reuters, Time magazine, VII Photo Agency and The Washington Post to create the most comprehensive collection of eyewitness accounts of the Iraq War yet published. These in-depth interviews offer first-person, frontline reports of the war as it unfolded, including key moments such as the battle for Fallujah, the toppling of Saddam’s statue, and the Haditha massacre. The photographers also vividly describe the often shocking and sometimes heroic actions that journalists undertook in trying to cover the war, and discuss the role of the media and issues of censorship. These hard-hitting accounts and photographs, rare in the annals of any war, reveal the inside and untold stories behind the headlines in Iraq.


Only 30 signed and numbered special edition copies available. Pay now and reserve your copy.
Release date: winter, 2012.


Each book is accompanied by a signed 8×10 inkjet print of Joao Silva’s ‘Sniper’.
Each book is signed by five photojournalists interviewed in the book.
Each book comes in presentation box.
Price is $500

Full details and ordering information here.


NY Times Lens Blog: "It is a brutally honest account of the war in Iraq from the point of view of the men and women who photographed it."


--This important book is almost ready for publication. Subscription of these 30 special-edition books will clear the final financial hurdle to publication. Monroe Gallery has placed our orders, please consider placing yours!

"It is neither a police officer’s duty or right to decide what is appropriate news coverage of any story"

 An Albuquerque police officer first told a news videographer that he would not be allowed to continue filming an incident where the body of a motorcyclist remained trapped underneath a car this morning.


Mickey Osterreicher, general counsel for the National Press Photographers Association, who will be sending a letter to Albuquerque Police Chief Ray Schultz, provided the following statement:

Watching the video of a senior officer who should know better illustrates how important proper guidelines and training are regarding these issues.

It is neither a police officer’s duty or right to decide what is appropriate news coverage of any story. So long as news personnel are in a public forum and not violating any ordinances they have a right to gather news unfettered by the personal feelings or opinions of law enforcement. Anything less may be considered a form of prior restraint or censorship. It is all well and good that the police set-up a media staging area but that does not mean it is the only place that media are allowed to be. They can go wherever the public is allowed, which in this case is outside of the "crime scene" perimeter. To expand that area for the sole purpose to preventing photographs or video recording is not a reasonable time, place and manner restriction and limits more First Amendment protected activity than is necessary to achieve a governmental purpose.

This department would be well-advised to take a page from the Crime/disaster scene guidelines of San Diego Sheriff's Department Media Guide, specifically:

Do not establish artificial barriers. For example, do not hold the press at bay a block from the crime scene, while allowing the general public to wander freely just beyond the crime scene tape.

Do not prevent the taking of pictures or interviews of person(s) in public places. The media, when legally present at an emergency scene, may photograph or report anything or interview anyone they observe.

Do not isolate the media outside the crime/incident scene unless the area has been secured to preserve evidence or their presence jeopardizes law enforcement operations.

PRIDE 2012

Ken Regan: Gay Rights March on Washington, April, 1993

All across the nation today, America’s LGBT population and their friends, family, and allies will unite in parades across the country celebrating the yearly tradition of Pride, always the last weekend in June to commemorate the Stonewall Riots of 1969, widely recognized as the first gay rights manifestation.


NY Daily News Slideshow: Gay Rights Movement in New York City


Related exhibition - People Get Ready: The Struggle For Human Rights

Steve McQueen: Unpublished Photos of the King of Cool

 John Dominis/Time Inc.: At his home in Palm Springs, McQueen practices his aim before heading out for a shooting session in the desert

Via Life.com


In the spring of 1963, Steve McQueen was on the brink of superstardom, already popular from his big-screen breakout as one of The Magnificent Seven and just a couple months away from entering the Badass Hall of Fame with the release of The Great Escape.

Intrigued by his dramatic backstory and his off-screen exploits — McQueen was a reformed delinquent who got his thrills racing cars and motorcycles — LIFE sent the great photographer John Dominis to California to hang out with the 33-year-old actor and, in effect, see what he could get.

Three weeks and more than 40 rolls of film later, Dominis had captured some astonishingly intimate and now-iconic images — photos impossible to imagine in today’s utterly restricted-access celebrity universe. Only a handful of those photos were ever published. Here, LIFE.com presents a series of previously unpublished gems from what Dominis would look back on as one of his favorite assignments, along with insights about the time he spent with the man who would soon don the mantle, “the King of Cool.”

Full slide show here.

Today in News History: June 21, 1964: Three civil rights workers disappeared in Philadelphia, Miss.

Today in News History: June 21, 1964: Three civil rights workers disappeared in Philadelphia, Miss. Their bodies were found buried in an earthen dam six weeks later.


A CIVIL RIGHTS LEGACY: "NESHOBA: THE PRICE OF FREEDOM"

“I once saw her taking a picture inside a refuse can. I never remotely thought that what she was doing would have some special artistic value.”

Self Portrait, February 1955   ©Maloof Collection

Self-Portrait in a Sheet Mirror: On Vivian Maier
Via The Nation

"We can’t know the full story behind this self-portrait, or behind the many thousands of images left in a storage locker in Chicago. But we can look at the range of Maier’s work and see the tantalizing evidence of artistry and ambition, and we can look at the expression of the woman reflected in the sheet mirror and see her indisputable pleasure. This is no frumpy old bird woman looking at her own pathetic destiny. This is a woman who knows what she wants, who has chosen to do her work free of judgment and commerce, and who is in charge of the scene."  Full article here.

WORLD REFUGEE DAY 2012

Eddie Adams: Boat of no smiles, Vietnamese Refugees, Gulf of Siam, Thanksgiving Day,1977



Theme for 2012: Refugees have no choice. You do.

THE BOAT OF NO SMILES

 Here’s my story: in early 1977 I noticed a couple of paragraphs in the New York Times about people escaping from Vietnam. Associated Press had just signed me up with carte blanche to cover the whole world, and complete editorial control. (The first person before or since to get it–that was the deal I made with them.) And I went to the president and said, "Boat people. Here’s a story I want to do," and started making calls all through Southeast Asia to AP bureaus to find out more. No one, no country, was letting the refugees land. You couldn’t even find out about them. At first, I went back and said the story was impossible to cover. Then I had an idea and got in touch with the Thai Marine police (I knew Thailand very well) who had been shoving the boats right back offshore to certain death. I told them would like to go with them on patrol in the Gulf of Siam. They OK’d it, so we headed for the most likely point in northern Thailand, getting there at 4am when a refugee boat had just pulled in; the Thai authorities were getting ready to cast it off again. It was Thanksgiving Day in 1977. I suddenly asked the Vietnamese if I could go with them— I bought gas and rice – they had no fuel or food. There were forty-nine people aboard that fishing boat, including children— in the hold that same day a baby was born. The Thais towed us back out to sea and set us adrift. On that boat, there was no room to lie down, so they all had to sit up straight, waking or sleeping. I cannot describe the despair. There were dramatic pictures of mothers with half-dead children in their arms but something even worse was there. Whenever you go to refugee camps in a war zone where terrible things have happened, where bodies might be stacked up, and disease everywhere, you still find children who gather before the camera with a smile. This was the first time in my life that no child smiled. I called the pictures, "the boat of no smiles." The boat was hardly moving- they didn’t even know where to go. Then we were approached by another Thai boat with a megaphone ordering me off at gunpoint— they were afraid someone would let them dock knowing there was an American aboard. I had mixed feelings about getting off. I wrote the story and sent the pictures immediately, and they ran. Peter Arnett did a story also and a few others. Within a couple of days the administration asked the AP to present the photos to Congress. And Carter said let them come to America. The Congress had been thinking about it, sure, but the pictures did it, pushed it over. To me that was the only thing I ever done that I cared about, valued. Pictures do work, at least sometimes. They carry conviction. Go back to the pictures in Speak Truth to Power and you can look at them in another way. These people, those faces, are the person next door. These are real people, and the pictures prove that no one made this up– they are the evidence that they exist. Ordinary people, doing extraordinary things.  --Eddie Adams

Related: Forthcoming Exhibition -

                        People Get Rady: The Struggle For Human Rights

                        July 6 - September 23, 2012

LIFE : Robert Kennedy dying by Bill Eppridge

Dying Robert Kennedy by Bill Eppridge © 1968 Time Inc



"I looked, and I did something that you should never do. I didn't take a picture."


-- Bill Eppridge



Via La Lettre de la Photographie

FATHER'S DAY, 2012

Guy Gillette: Arnolds, Cafe, Lovelady, Texas, 1956

You can thank Richard Nixon for making Father's Day and official holiday.

Related: Happy Father's Day 2011

FLAG DAY, 2012

Bill Eppridge: White Barn, New Preston, CT, 2007

The History of Flag Day

100 books, 56 cameras and 6,000 photographs

100 books, 56 cameras and 6,000 photographs

Pinhole Resource Collection Joins the History Museum’s

Palace of the Governors Photo Archives

Santa Fe (June 13, 2012)—Mysterious, artistic, and as low-tech as an oatmeal box, pinhole photography has captivated everyone from schoolchildren to professional photographers for more than a century. The Pinhole Resource Archives, the world’s largest collection of images, books and cameras, just joined New Mexico’s largest archive of photography, the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives at the New Mexico History Museum.

The collection was a donation from Pinhole Resource Inc., which is based in New Mexico and led by Eric Renner and Nancy Spencer.

“In looking at other possible repositories for the Pinhole Resource Collection, we felt the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives had a tremendous web presence, which would make the collection accessible to people worldwide,” Renner and Spencer said in a prepared statement. “In addition, with the staff’s enthusiasm and interest in pinhole images we felt the collection would have a good home here in New Mexico."

The Photo Archives has already digitized hundreds of the images, which can be searched here (http://econtent.unm.edu/cdm4/indexpg.php ); click on “Browse Pinhole Resource Collection” or type the word “Pinhole” into the search box. In 2014, the museum will mount an exhibition, Poetics of Light, celebrating pinhole photography.

 “The Photo Archives and the state of New Mexico is fortunate to be the repository for this world-class collection of pinhole photography. There is no other collection like it and is a tremendous addition to the resources made available to the public through the Photo Archives,” said archivist Daniel Kosharek.

Even in this digital age, pinhole photography remains an intriguing medium. Its popularity has been celebrated every April since 2001 with Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day. The 2010 event drew 3,387 images from 67 countries.

An exhibition of images from this unparalleled collection of pinhole photographs, representing images from New Mexico and around the world, is scheduled for April 2014 at the New Mexico History Museum. Poetics of Light will coincide with Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day.

In the 5^th century BC, a Chinese philosopher noted the inverted image produced through a pinhole—an effect that led to development of the camera obscura and serves as the fundamental quality of pinhole photography. Renaissance artists Leonardo da Vinci, Filippo Brunelleschi, and Leon Battista Alberti advanced the knowledge of pinhole camera obscura imagery, creating a basis and understand of one-point perspective. In 1850, Sir David Brewster, a Scottish scientist, took the first photograph with a pinhole camera. By the mid-1980s, a variety of pinhole cameras could be purchased by anyone who wanted to create images without creating the camera.

In its most simple description, a pinhole camera is a lens-less camera with a small aperture. The interior of the “camera” (which can be, yes, an oatmeal box…or a traffic cone…or the human mouth…) contains a piece of film that records the projected image over periods of time that can range from a second to a year.

Pinhole Resource Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to pinhole photography across the globe, was formed in New Mexico in 1984 by Eric Renner. He began working in pinhole photography in 1968, while teaching three-dimensional design for the State University of New York at Alfred. Images from his 6 pinhole panoramic camera were shown in the first exhibition of the Visual Studies Workshop Gallery in Rochester, New York. Consequently, one of Renner’s images was included in the Time-Life Series The Art of Photography, 1971. Through exhibitions and workshops, he met pinhole artists throughout the world and worried that their work might become as lost as the thousands of images taken during the Pictorial Movement from the late 1880s to early 1900s.

After forming the nonprofit, he created the Pinhole Journal, and in 1989 was joined by Nancy Spencer, co-director of Pinhole Resource and co-editor of the journal, which ceased publication in 2006. Their collections included images from Europe, the Mideast, Asia and the Americas, books about pinhole photography, and dozens of pinhole cameras, one of which dates back to the 1880s.

The Palace of the Governors Photo Archives contains more than 800,000 prints, cased photographs, glass plate negatives, stereographs, photo postcards, lantern slides and more. Almost 20,000 images can be keyword searched on its website. The materials date from approximately 1850 to the present and cover the history and people of New Mexico from some of the most important 19^th- and 20^th-century photographers of the West—Adolph Bandelier, George C. Bennett, John Candelario, W.H. Cobb, Edward S. Curtis, Charles Lindbergh, Jesse Nusbaum, T. Harmon Parkhurst, Ben Wittick, and many others.

The Archives actively seeks material from contemporary photographers as well in order to document the past 50 years of visual history in New Mexico. Recent acquisitions include works by Jack Parsons, Herbert A. Lotz, Tony O’Brien, Steve Fitch, David Michael Kennedy, John Willis, Ann Bromberg, and Cary Herz.

Image: Top, "Community," by Linda Pearson, 2002. Palace of the Governors Photo Archives HP.2012.15.357.

Media contact: Kate Nelson, Public Relations and Marketing

New Mexico History Museum/Palace of the Governors

(505) 476-1141; (505) 554-5722 (cell)

kate.nelson@state.nm.us

http://media.museumofnewmexico.org/

The New Mexico History Museum is the newest addition to a campus that includes the Palace of the Governors, the oldest continuously occupied public building in the United States; Fray Angélico Chávez History Library; Palace of the Governors Photo Archives; the Press at the Palace of the Governors; and the Native American Artisans Program. Located at 113 Lincoln Ave., in Santa Fe, NM, it is a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs.



“That the First Amendment right to gather news is . . . not one that inures solely to the benefit of the news media; rather, the public’s right of access to information is coextensive with that of the press"

Via National Press Photographers Association June 8, 2012

"I read with disappointing disbelief your recent statement in the Queens Chronicle “that only one journalist was arrested during the operation, despite stories to the contrary,” which you called “a total myth.” I also found it incredulous that given our media coalition letter of November 21, 2011, which addressed the arrests of journalists in and around Zuccotti Park; and during our meeting with you and Commissioner Kelly on November 23, 2011, no one ever raised the issue that “Occupy Wall Street protesters were forging press credentials in an effort to get through the police lines.” To hear you now deny your department’s culpability by claiming that “actual reporters” were not arrested is an absolute revision of history and is more appropriate as part of “1984 Newspeak” than coming from the Deputy Commissioner for Public Information for the NYPD."


Via SaveTheNews.org

NYPD Tries to Rewrite History
"After becoming the epicenter for press suppression and journalist arrests over the last nine months, the NYPD is trying to rewrite history and pretend like nothing ever happened."

Via New York Observer Politicker  June 8, 2012
NYPD Spokesman Says Stories Of Reporters Arrested At Occupy Raid Were ‘A Total Myth’


Setting the Record Straight on NYPD Journalist Arrests


February 1, 2012: The New York Times fired off another letter to the Police Department today on behalf of 13 New York-based news organizations about police treatment of the press over the last several months.

"You got that credential you’re wearing from us, and we can take it away from you.”

November 18, 2011: As faculty members of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, we are alarmed at the arrests of working news professionals during the ongoing Occupy Wall Street protests, and deeply concerned that the NYPD blocked reporters' and photographers' access to Zuccotti Park during the recent eviction of the Occupy Wall Street encampment.

Tahrir Square in 17 Months

Hundreds of thousands (photo taken after many left) gathered in Tahrir on June 2nd, in objection to the verdict in Mubarak trial. Mubarak and Habib El-Adly (ex-Interior minister) were sentenced to life imprisonment regarding the killing of protesters during the eighteen day. Gamal and Alaa Mubarak along with Adly's assistants were acquitted, and their verdict can't be appealed.© Jonathan Rashad

Jonathan Rashad is a Cairo-based photojournalist covering the Egyptian Uprising. He was in Egyptian custody for 54 days for covering clashes near Interior Ministry.

Here he posts gallery of aerial photos of Tahrir Square taken over 17 months

EDDIE ADAMS DAY: June 9, 2012

Via National Presss Photographers Association

NEW KENSINGTON, PA  - The Pennsylvania hometown of the great photojournalist Eddie Adams has proclaimed June 9, 2012, to be "Eddie Adams Day." The celebration in New Kensington includes includes a gallery opening, a screening of the documentary "An Unlikely Weapon," and a gala dinner with speaker and Pulitzer Prize winner John Filo.

June 5, 1968: “How many people died because of that assassination?"

Via Conneticut Magazine


When the gunshots that mortally wounded Sen. Robert F. Kennedy rang out in a California hotel that fateful night 44 years ago, Life magazine photographer Bill Eppridge was right behind the Democratic presidential candidate. Eppridge didn’t panic or run; instead he did what he had risked his life to do in Vietnam—he took pictures and recorded history.

“I was about 12 feet behind [Kennedy] and I heard the shots start,” Eppridge says in the living room of the New Milford home he shares with his wife, Adrienne. In his 70s, Eppridge has dark hair and a deep, penetrating stare. When he talks about his days with Kennedy he speaks slowly and deliberately, as if he’s reliving each moment.

The assassination took place at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968. The shots were fired by 24-year-old Palestinian immigrant Sirhan Sirhan, and Eppridge himself was nearly hit by a stray bullet.

“One man [Paul Schrade], who was about four or five feet in front of me, standing directly in line with me and Sirhan, took a bullet in the head,” he says. Immediately, Eppridge began taking pictures. “One of the first thoughts that came to my mind was that JFK, when he had been shot, there were no still photographic records made of that. I thought now you’ve changed your job, you’re a historian.”

Among the photographs Eppridge took that night is the haunting image of a fallen Kennedy being cradled in the arms of Juan Romero, an Ambassador Hotel busboy who had shaken hands with the candidate just moments before. That powerful picture captured by Eppridge has become one of the enduring images of the assassination.
It was just that day that Kennedy had agreed to let Eppridge be a part of his immediate entourage for the night. Eppridge says that after making his speech, Kennedy left the hotel’s Embassy Room ballroom the same way he came into it—through the kitchen, despite the repeated protests of his lone bodyguard, William Barry. (It was only after the shooting that the Secret Service began protecting presidential candidates.)
“Barry knew the ropes and he knew that you don’t go out of a room the same way you came in,” Eppridge explains.

He had photographed Kennedy two years earlier and on the campaign trail they’d become friends, but at first Eppridge could not take time to grieve for his fallen friend. “After Frank Mankiewicz [Kennedy’s press secretary] announced that Bobby was gone, I went back to New York and met the plane there when they brought him in, photographed the funeral at St. Patrick’s, took that train ride to Washington, and then I cried,” he says.

If Kennedy hadn’t been murdered, Eppridge believes that history would have taken a vastly different course. “I don’t think people realize the significance of that assassination and what would have happened had he not been shot,” Eppridge says. He believes Kennedy would have became president instead of Republican Richard Nixon and would have ended the Vietnam War immediately—saving the lives of more than 20,000 American soldiers and tens of thousands of North and South Vietnamese soldiers and civilians.

“How many people died because of that assassination?” Eppridge asks. “That’s stuck with me, it bothers me.”

In addition to the tragic end of the Kennedy campaign, Eppridge covered many iconic moments in the 1960s for Life magazine, including the Beatles’ arrival in America in 1964 and the Woodstock music festival in 1969. In 2008, he compiled his photographs and wrote about his time with Kennedy in the book A Time It Was: Bobby Kennedy in the Sixties.

Eppridge doesn’t subscribe to any of the many conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination, especially that there was a second gunman and more than eight shots fired that night.

“Somebody had supposedly taped 16 gunshots; there were not [16 shots],” he says. “I counted the number of shots and there were eight. So all this stuff about there being somebody else there shooting—no, there wasn’t.”

Besides security being light around the candidate, the campaign was very open, making Kennedy an easy target. Also, Sirhan is on record saying that he hated Kennedy because of his support of Israel.

“One plus one equals two sometimes,” Eppridge says. “I really think it was just one wacko, and a number of guys who were on that campaign have also said that, but you know, you can always be wrong. Always.”

This article appeared in the June 2012 issue of Connecticut Magazine


Related: Bill Eppridge: An American Treasure Review "An Eye On The Times"

This Day in History, June 4, 1989: Tiananmen Square

Jeff Widener

New York Times: Shanghai Market’s Echo of Tiananmen Date Sets Off Censors

New York Times Lens Blog: Behind the Scenes: A New Angle on History

Via ABC News: "China's internet censors have blocked words and phrases associated with yesterday's anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Key phrases relating to yesterday's date and expressions like "never forget" have been blocked by China's internet censors."

Via The Guardian: Chinese censors act to silence Tiananmen anniversary talk

Via BBC News: "China has detained political activists and placed others under increased surveillance in cities around the country to prevent them from marking the anniversary of the massacre in Tiananmen Square on Monday."

Via VR Zone: In yet another crackdown on free speech, China has banned searches for terms relating to the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, where hundreds of pro-democracy protesters were killed by government forces.

Forthcoming Exhibition: "People Get Ready: The Struggle For Human Rights"

"If you have the nerve to walk into the halls of Congress and show them the obscenity that is a child that must wash herself with poison every day, they will call you a child pornographer. They will call the police."

Obscenity: I Know It When I See It

   

Coney Island's endless summer

To create this image, the photographer spent 15 hours suspended in a crane 150 feet above the Coney Island boardwalk

Via Fortune Magazine

New York City's No. 1 destination for thrill-seekers is in the middle of a high-dollar facelift.

By Anne VanderMey, reporter

FORTUNE -- In 1938, at the height of Coney Island's popularity, Fortune reported that the "narrow strip of land, about 800 to 1,000 feet in width and two and a quarter miles long," was valued at about $22 million, or $337 million in today's dollars. But the strip is probably worth more than that: New York City expects the boardwalk to generate $14 billion in the next three decades.

By the numbers:
11 million: Number of visitors to Coney Island last summer. Of those, 640,000 went to Luna Park and Scream Zone for the 26 rides -- the highest amusement park attendance since 1964. Two new rides will open this summer.

$4.5 million: Sale price of the Eldorado Auto Skooters building, purchased this spring by Thor Equities. Thor now owns about seven acres of land in Coney Island, and plans to develop some of its properties into ritzy hotels.

90 mph: Top speed of the Sling Shot, Luna Park's fastest ride. The first roller coaster in the U.S. made its debut in Coney Island in 1884. It cost 5¢ to ride and topped out at 6 mph. The Sling Shot costs $20 a pop.

Source: New York City Economic Development Corp.
This story is from the June 11, 2012 issue of Fortune.



Related: Stephen Wilkes: Day To Night exhibition extened through June 24

IT WAS 40 YEARS AGO...Live Facebook chat with Pulitzer Prize Photojounalist Nick Ut Monday at 2 Eastern

In this June 8, 1972 file photo, crying children, including 9-year-old Kim Phuc, center, run down Route 1 near Trang Bang, Vietnam after an aerial napalm attack on suspected Viet Cong hiding places as South Vietnamese forces from the 25th Division walk behind them. A South Vietnamese plane accidentally dropped its flaming napalm on South Vietnamese troops and civilians. From left, the children are Phan Thanh Tam, younger brother of Kim Phuc, who lost an eye, Phan Thanh Phouc, youngest brother of Kim Phuc, Kim Phuc, and Kim's cousins Ho Van Bon, and Ho Thi Ting. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)

When photographer Nick Ut snapped the Pulitzer-winning image of Kim Phuc, neither knew what the next 40 years had in store. On Monday, June 4, the AP  will be hosting a live Facebook chat with Nick at 2 p.m. EDT. Start asking your questions now on the AP Facebook page, and Nick may respond during the chat.

Joe McNally: Phan Ti Kim Phuc, 1995



 Joe McNally was the first to photograph Kim Phuc and her baby, for Life magazine

Joe McNally:  "That photo made on that horrible day was made in less than a second. Yet a lifetime spun on its power."

NPR: "Whatever your age, you've probably seen this photo. It's a hard image to forget"
(with audio)


'Napalm Girl' photo from Vietnam War turns 40: David Ono hosts special, 'Witness: Power of a Picture' (video)

The Guardian:  Girl from AP's Vietnam napalm photo finds peace with her role in history

Washington Post Slideshow

Related: It Was Forty Years Ago Today (1968)

PEOPLE GET READY

Jeff Widener

 A lone man stops a column of tanks near Tiananmen Square, 1989 Beijing, China

This recent headline:

"23 years after Tiananmen, China is still paying: The annual crackdown on commemorations of the June 4 anniversary of the brutal suppression of student-led demonstrations based in Tiananmen Square in 1989 Beijing is under way."

reminds us that the right to freedom of expression also requires consistent defense.

Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, is pleased to announce "People Get Ready: The Struggle For Human Rights", a major exhibition of  dramatic photographs from significant human rights struggles in history. The exhibition opens with a public reception Friday, July 6, 5 - 7 PM, and continues through September 23, 2012

The belief that everyone, by virtue of her or his humanity, is entitled to certain human rights is fairly new. Its roots, however, lie in earlier traditions and documents of many cultures; however, it took the catalyst of World War II to propel human rights onto the global stage and into the global conscience. 

Yet, every day we still see images of people struggling for their freedom; their right to live without fear, their right to speak and their right to worship the god of their choice. In the past several months, we have watched as citizens in Egypt and Libya took to the streets to air their politics and struggle for freedom; and here in the United States, the Occupy Wall Street movement championed the cause of economic and social rights. The struggle around the world is unrelenting. Dedicated photojournalists have been, and continue to be, there to bring the voices and the images of the people as they rise to fight for basic human rights. (According to the Committee To Protect Journalists, 19 journalists have been killed in 2012 and 179 are currently in jail world-wide.)

Photographers in this exhibition illustrate the power of photography to inform, persuade, enlighten and enrich the viewer's life. Many of the photographs featured in this exhibition not only moved the public at the time of their publication, and continue to have an impact today, but set social and political changes in motion, transforming the way we live and think.

Many global human rights movements are documented in the exhibition, including: Civil Rights in America, Women's Rights, Democracy rights, People's rights, Worker's rights, Gay rights, and other causes. Also included are stark photographs of stalwart defenders of the-then status quo, from segregationists to proponents of sexism.

Photographers in the exhibition include: Eddie Adams, Nina Berman, Margart Bourke-White, Bill Eppridge, Ashley Gilbertson, Yuri Kozyrev, Ken Regan, Steve Schapiro, Paul Schutzer, Grey Villet, Jeff Widener, and numerous other renowned photojournalists.