New Exhibit and Gallery Conversation: Bob Gomel - Classics

 BOB GOMEL: CLASSICS

Santa Fe--Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, is pleased to announce a special exhibition of photographs celebrating Bob Gomel’s recent 90th birthday with several never-before-see photographs from three of his most iconic assignments for LIFE magazine: photographs of The Beatles, Muhammad Ali, and President John F. Kennedy.

The exhibition opens with a Gallery conversation with Bob Gomel on Friday, October 6. Talk begins promptly at 5:30, seated is limited and RSVP is essential; contact the Gallery for live Zoom registration. The exhibition continues through November 19, 2023.

The photographs of Bob Gomel put you in a diner with Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X after Ali’s defeat of Sonny Liston, poolside with the Beatles, and in the audience at Rice University as President John F. Kennedy delivered his historic “We choose to go to the Moon” speech. This exhibit explores three classic assignments for LIFE magazine with many never-before-seen photographs of The Beatles, Muhammad Ali, and President John F. Kennedy.

 “I had no idea the 60s would be so iconic. It seemed quite ordinary at the time, but looking back on it now, I realize how fortunate I was.”

From the tumult of battle to the glamour of movie stars, from the wonders of nature to the coronation of kings, queens, and presidents, the work of LIFE photographers is as much a history of American photojournalism as it is a history of the changing face of the latter part of the Twentieth Century. On the pages of LIFE, through the images captured by these masters, the eyes of a nation were opened as never before to a changing world. 

The triumphs and tragedies of the 1960s provided photographer Bob Gomel and his LIFE magazine colleague’s extraordinary opportunities to advance American photojournalism. "LIFE was the world's best forum for photojournalists. We were encouraged to push creative and technical boundaries. There was no better place to work in that extraordinary decade." 

Bob Gomel was born (1933) and raised in New York City. After serving four years in the U.S. Navy, he was promptly offered a job at the Associated Press. But by then, he had changed his mind about what he wanted to do. “I just felt one picture wasn’t sufficient to tell a story,” he explains. “I was interested in exploring something in depth. And, of course, the mecca was Life magazine.”He turned down the offer from AP, and began working for LIFE in 1959, producing many memorable images. When LIFE ceased being a weekly in the early 1970s, he began making photographs for other major magazines. Also in the 1970s, he branched out into advertising photography. Among other accounts, he helped introduce Merrill Lynch’s Bullish on America campaign.

Bob says, “Each time I raised a camera to my eye I wondered how to make a viewer say, “wow.” What followed were the use of double exposures to tell a more complete story; placing remote cameras where no human being could be; adapting equipment to reveal what could not ordinarily be captured on film. My goal with people was to penetrate the veneer, to reveal the true personality or character. The ideal was sometimes mitigated by circumstances, a lack of time or access. But more often than not what the mind conceived could be translated into successful photographic images. Life Magazine in the 60s sold 8,000,000 copies a week. It was a great honor to be a part of that information highway.” 

Symposium: With Their Own Eyes: Photographers Witness the March on Washington

Via Library of Congress
Library of Congress Holds Symposium on Jan. 13

With Their Own Eyes: Photographers Witness the March on Washington

A Library of Congress symposium on Jan. 13 will bring together photographers who took pictures at the March on Washington more than 50 years ago.

"With Their Own Eyes: Photographers Witness the March on Washington" is being held in conjunction with the Library’s exhibition "A Day Like No Other: Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington," which is on view through March 1.

The symposium will be held from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 13, in the Whittall Pavilion on the ground floor of the Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First St. S.E., Washington, D.C. The event is free and open to the public. No tickets or reservations are needed.

Photographers featured in the exhibition, along with relatives of photographers no longer alive, will take part in the program. The participants include Bob Adelman; Theresa Lynn Carter, the daughter of Roosevelt Carter; Brigitte Freed, the widow of Leonard Freed; and David Johnson. They will share their accounts of the day and discuss how the march changed their lives. Keith Jenkins will moderate the discussion.

The program will begin with a welcome from Kim Phan, president of the Friends of the Law Library of Congress, which is co-sponsoring the symposium with the Library’s Prints and Photographs Division. The event is made possible through generous donations from Roberta I. Shaffer; the Leica Store in Washington, D.C. and the Friends of the Law Library. Speakers at the Symposium

• Bob Adelman is a photographer known for his images of the Civil Rights Movement. His interest in social and political events of the day drew him to the sit-ins staged by young students across the American South. In the early 1960s, he volunteered to photograph demonstrations for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). He was close friends with Martin Luther King, Jr. and U.S. Rep. John Lewis. Adelman continues to be involved with civil rights issues and the human condition.
• Theresa Lynn Carter is the daughter of Roosevelt Carter (1926-1981), who traveled to Washington with a church group from Columbus, Ohio. He brought along his camera to capture a personal view of the day. He focused on the thousands of faces along the March route from every walk of life, including the many celebrities.
• Brigitte Freed is the widow of Leonard Freed (1929-2006) and was his darkroom assistant. The couple was based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, until a photograph taken by Leonard Freed of a black American soldier guarding the Berlin Wall compelled him to return home to the United States to document the civil rights struggle in 1963. Freed’s photographs from 1963 to 1965 were published in the now-classic book "Black in White America."
• David Johnson is a professional photographer who credits Ansel Adams as his major influence. Johnson documented black life and culture in the early years of the Civil Rights Movement. He attended the March on Washington as a delegate from the Bay Area NAACP and covered the event for a local newspaper.
• Keith Jenkins, director of photography at the National Geographic Society, is a former supervising senior producer for multimedia at National Public Radio. Prior to working at NPR, Jenkins was the first director of photography at AOL. He spent 13 years at the Washington Post in various positions, from staff photographer to photography editor for the Washington Post Magazine and Washingtonpost.com. Earlier, Jenkins worked as a staff photographer for the Boston Globe.

After the symposium, tours of the exhibition will be offered. "A Day Like No Other: Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington" which opened on Aug. 28, 2013 and closes on March 1, 2014, consists of 40 iconic black-and-white images that mark what Martin Luther King, Jr., called "the greatest demonstration for freedom in the nation’s history." The photographs, part of the Library’s Prints and Photographs Division collections, convey the immediacy of being at the march and the excitement of those who were there. A video-screen display in the exhibition features another 75 images.

The Prints and Photographs Division includes more than 15 million photographs, drawings and prints form the 15th century to the present day. International in scope, these visual collections represent a uniquely rich array of human experience, knowledge, creativity and achievement, touching on almost every realm of endeavor: science, art, invention, government and political struggle, and the recording of history. For more information, visit www.loc.gov/rr/print/.

The Library of Congress, the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and the largest library in the world, holds more than 155 million items in various languages, disciplines and formats. The Library serves the U.S. Congress and the nation both on-site in its reading rooms on Capitol Hill and through its award-winning website at www.loc.gov.

Remembering Camelot

"The pictures that shape how we remember John and Jacqueline Kennedy"

 

 

With photographs by Mark Shaw, Ed Clark, Cecil Stoughton, Lisa Larsen, Jacques Lowe,

Stanley Tretick, Hank Walker, Charles Moore, and many others.

 

Related: "The LIFE Photographers”, an exhibition concurrent with the publication of the new book LIFE: The Day Kennedy Died, 50 Years Later LIFE Remembers the Man & the Moment. The exhibition opens with a public reception and book signing by renowned LIFE editor Richard Stolley on November 29, and will continue through January 24, 2014. (The famous Zapruder film first appeared in LIFE, after being acquired by Richard B. Stolley.)

 

 

 

 

50th Anniversary of the March on Washington

 

©Steve Schapiro: Jackie Robinson, March on Washington, 1963

 

On August 28, 2013 citizens from across this country will converge upon our nation’s capital to commemorate and celebrate the historic March On Washington which occurred 50 years ago on August 28, 1963.

 

This site provides information and updates on the numerous commemorative marches that are being planned throughout this country. In addition, this site provides citizens an opportunity to leave their remembrances and pictures of the march that changed the world.

 

Full details here.

 

 

 

Related: 

 TIME:  “One Dream” — a multimedia commemoration of the 1963 March on Washington and the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech

Exhibit: 1963

50th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham

50 Years Ago Today: 'Ich bin ein Berliner'

John Dominis: President John F. Kennedy looking over Berlin wall to Eastern Sector, 1963

©Time Inc.

Via BBC  1963: Kennedy: 'Ich bin ein Berliner'

The US President, John F Kennedy, made a ground-breaking speech in Berlin offering American solidarity to the citizens of West Germany.

A crowd of 120,000 Berliners gathered in front of the Schöneberg Rathaus (City Hall) to hear President Kennedy speak.

They began gathering in the square long before he was due to arrive, and when he finally appeared on the podium they gave him an ovation of several minutes.

The president had just returned from a visit on foot to one of the Berlin Wall's most notorious crossing points, Checkpoint Charlie.

He was watched from the other side of the border by small groups of East Berliners unable even to wave because of the presence of large groups of the East German People's Police.

In an impassioned speech, the president told them West Berlin was a symbol of freedom in a world threatened by the Cold War.

"Two thousand years ago," he told the crowd, "the proudest boast in the world was 'civis Romanus sum'.

"Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is 'Ich bin ein Berliner.'"

"Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect," he continued. "But we never had to put up a wall to keep our people in."

His speech was punctuated throughout by rapturous cheers of approval.

He ended on the theme he had begun with:

"All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words, 'Ich bin ein Berliner.'"

After the speech, the mayor of West Berlin, Willi Brandt, spoke out for the citizens of East Germany, saying they would be brought out in a few days to greet the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, whether they wanted to or not.

"But they would much rather be with us, freely gathered here," he said.

"We tell them, we will not give up. Berlin is true to those behind barbed wire as to fellow countrymen in the West and friends in the whole world."

His words were followed by the tolling of the Freedom Bell from the belfry of the Rathaus in remembrance of those in East Germany.

For the first time that day, the massive crowd fell silent.

50 years ago today: the burning monk in Saigon

Fifty years ago today, an Associated Press correspondent made a series of photographs that would shock a president and impact U.S. policy on the Vietnam War.


Associated Press: The Burning Monk: A defining moment photographed by AP’s Malcolm Browne

NBC News PhotoBlog:  Burning monk photo: How a moment became breaking news in 15 hours

Time LightBox: Malcolm Browne: The Story Behind The Burning Monk

Exhibition: 1963

The Legacy of Civil Rights Leader Medgar Evers

Via The Newseum

By Dinah Douglas, assistant Web writer

WASHINGTON — On June 5, 2013, the Newseum hosted the panel discussion "The Legacy of Civil Rights Leader Medgar Evers." Evers was a civil rights icon who in 1954 became the first NAACP field secretary in Mississippi. Evers spearheaded demonstrations and boycotts of businesses that practiced racial discrimination and organized voter registrations for African Americans. He was assassinated in the driveway of his home 50 years ago on June 12, 1963.

Evers's widow, Myrlie Evers, headed a panel that included former NAACP chairman Julian Bond and Jerry Mitchell, a reporter for The Clarion-Ledger, whose work helped convict the man who assassinated Evers. Gwen Ifill, senior correspondent for "PBS NewsHour," moderated the discussion.
The event was one in a series related to a new exhibit at the Newseum titled "Make Some Noise: Students and the Civil Rights Movement," which will open Aug. 2, 2013. The exhibit coincides with the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington and will explore the new generation of student leaders in the early 1960s who fought systematic discrimination by exercising their First Amendment rights.

Related Exhibition: 1963

1963

 Charles Moore, Fire Hoses Aimed at Demonstrators, Birmingham, 1963,

Gewlatin silver print, 11” x 14”

THE Magazine
June, 2013

The very time I thought I was lost/
My dungeon shook and my chains fell off
—African-American spiritual


 

In the preface to his 1953 novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, a poetic exploration of race and religion in the United States, James Baldwin made an important, if paradoxical proclamation: “I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” More than half a century after thethirty-one-year-old African-American writer released his book to a shifting American public, civil rights issues are still a vast and clumsy national topic.

Monroe Gallery’s current show of black and-white photographs is titled, simply enough, 1963, and covers that tumultuous year in American history with empathy and remarkable beauty. While human-rights concerns were gaining visibility in many parts of the country, changes must have felt imperceptible in many others, and the exhibition does a great job of visually encapsulating this disparity. Entering the space, one first sees photographs of Martin Luther King, Jr.—fitting enough, considering he delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963. An image of this iconic moment shows King at a podium, surrounded by listeners. Nearby,the picture Fire Hoses Aimed at Demonstrators, Birmingham, 1963, depicts three people being blasted with water from an unseen fireman during a protest in Alabama. The image is jarringly visceral and utterly captivating. In President John F. Kennedy Visiting Berlin, 1963, we see a gaggle of admirers clamoring around the figure of the president in a black car. JFK’sassassination would take place just five months later, a knowledge that, for the viewer, imbues the scene with an incredible poignancy. In a nearby photo, a barefoot Jackie Kennedy walks along the Palm Beach shoreline with her little son.

Undoubtedly, for most of us the show is a powerful history lesson. James Meredith, the first African-American to graduate from the infamously segregated University of Mississippi, is pictured surrounded by U.S. Marshals but his face retains a calm poise. A sobering handful of images memorialize the funeral of Medgar Evers, a pioneering and vocal advocate for African-American rights, who was shot and killed by a Ku Klux Klansman who wasn’t initially convicted of the crime. For the most part, the other half of the gallery space displays work that’s less politically and emotionally charged. A particularly lovely composition shows Steve McQueen and his wife relaxing in a hot tub, cigarettes and wine goblets in hand. The next photograph shows the be-sunglassed actor sitting on a sofa, holding a pistol. Next to this is a four-paneled composition of Sean Connery, posing with a sly grin and a gun. An image of Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra and a handful of photos of athletes like Arnold Palmer and Sandy Koufax round out this part of the show. These shots are no doubt meant to inject a little levity, but I thought the placement of images that either depict violence or else strongly suggest it, coupled with Hollywoodstyle showiness and triumphant moments in sports history, made for an incompatible and somewhat unpalatable juxtaposition.

In 1963, ten years after he spoke of his conflicted relationship with America, James Baldwin penned a letter to his teenage nephew, elaborating on what he called “my dispute with my country.” In it, he warns the boy that though people know better than to behave out of fear and hate, they often “find it very difficult to act on what they know.… To act is to be committed and to be committed is to be in danger.” Fifty years after this letter was written, it can still be said that the politicians who ostensibly represent us are afraid to be committed to a strong position when it comes to making decisions on issues like gun control and same-sex marriage. There’s a potentially squirmy reaction from photography lovers who walk into Monroe Gallery and expect foggy landscapes and nudes, and that’s one of the reasons 1963 is such an admirably courageous little exhibition. More than a show, this grouping of photographs is really a meditation on an era that isn’t completely in America’s rearview mirror. In 2013, being an American and loving America can feel downright paradoxical, and though we can’t always make amends for the wrongs committed by our nation in her past, the work in this show seems to quietly remind us that through learning and remembering, we can pave the way for a kinder future.

—Iris McLister

 

 

Birmingham Students Reenact Historic March, 50 Years Later

1963: 50 Years Ago



Via NPR: Listen here

"In Birmingham, Alabama, today, young people marched peacefully through downtown. It was a reenactment of not-so-peaceful civil rights marches 50 years ago, when a Children's Crusade drew brutal resistance from segregationists and changed the heart of the nation."

NPR's Debbie Elliott has this look back.

DEBBIE ELLIOTT, BYLINEToday, Birmingham's students had permission to miss class for their historic march.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Wenonah, file behind the foot soldiers. Center Point High School, behind Wenonah. Back up this way.
ELLIOTT: The youth lined up in the street beside Kelly Ingram Park, where statues depict the police dogs and fire hoses that young marchers faced there 50 years ago.
The Children's Crusade was part of the Birmingham campaign, a calculated move by civil rights leaders to take their fight to a city so violently opposed to integration its nickname was Bombingham.
Here's the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. explaining the strategy.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED AUDIO)
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.: And I have the feeling that if we can get a breakthrough in Birmingham and really break down the walls of segregation, it will demonstrate to the whole South - at least the hard-core South - that it can no longer resist.
ELLIOTT: But in Birmingham, the resistance was fierce, led by Police Commissioner Bull Connor, the hardest of hard-core segregationists.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED AUDIO)
BULL CONNOR: You can never whip these birds if you don't keep you and them separate. I found that out in Birmingham. You've got to keep the white and the black separate.
ELLIOTT: The student marches in the spring of 1963 were just the beginning of a violent year that would culminate in the Ku Klux Klan bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church, where four black girls were killed. The scenes from Birmingham galvanized the nation and prompted President Kennedy to begin work on the Civil Rights Act. Now, 50 years later, the city is commemorating its crucial role.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Can somebody say Fred Shuttlesworth?
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: Fred Shuttlesworth.
ELLIOTT: At this city hall ceremony earlier this year, foot soldiers of the Birmingham movement were honored with the inaugural Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth Flame Award named for the local preacher who convinced Martin Luther King to launch the Birmingham campaign.
Honoree Tom Ellison says he started marching when he was just 5 years old and hasn't stopped since. Ellison was a classmate of Addie Mae Collins, one of the girls killed in the church bombing. And his father was a local minister active in the movement. He says the city has come a long way.
TOM ELLISON: Just even being in city hall sometimes is a miracle to me because I lived down town. I lived a block away from 16th Street Baptist Church, and we knew not to even come this way.
ELLIOTT: Ellison's experiences being jailed and beaten in the '60s led him to his career as a medical doctor because he says local doctors back then were afraid to come and treat injured marchers.
ELLISON: You weren't going to risk the rage of Bull Connor to come down and help.
(LAUGHTER)
ELLISON: So most often people just went home beaten and bruised and bleeding.
ELLIOTT: Leaders say this 50th anniversary year is a chance to acknowledge the culpability of the city's institutions that furthered segregation, for instance, the local newspaper.
BARNETT WRIGHT: The Birmingham News really did not do what it was supposed to do in 1963. The newspaper failed in its mission.
ELLIOTT: Barnett Wright is a reporter with the News today.
WRIGHT: Well, one example is on May 2nd when thousands of students left school to march. The Birmingham News did not put that story on the front page.
ELLIOTT: The top stories instead were about a pet snake and two people who scaled a mountain in Katmandu.
WRIGHT: So a story 8,200 miles away from the front doors of The Birmingham News was more important than a life-changing event.
ELLIOTT: Wright has compiled a book called "1963: How the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement Changed America and the World."
Today, hundreds of students stretched for two blocks to reenact the city's watershed events. Woodlawn High School student Reagan Harris was among the marchers.
REAGAN HARRIS: I'm very blessed to be here today to do this because back then we couldn't even cross the street with each other. But now, everyone is holding hands and rejoicing together. So I think it's a big responsibility to come out here and do this today.
ELLIOTT: The march was upbeat, more like a parade as a college marching band led the procession. A far cry from the billy clubs, police dogs and fire hoses 50 years ago.
Debbie Elliott, NPR News.

Copyright © 2013 NPR.

Related:

 April was a cruel month for black people in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963. So was May, and the months that followed, culminating in the explosion of a bomb in an church that September that killed four girls. Fifty years ago today, on May 2, 1963, teen-agers and children, some as young as six, marched in Birmingham to protest segregation. Many were arrested for parading without a permit, but the marchers came back the next day. They were viciously knocked down in the streets by torrents of water from fire hoses wielded by white policemen, were hit with batons or set upon by police dogs. Martin Luther King, Jr., who had been arrested in the city on April 12th—he was held for a week, during which he wrote his “Letter from Birmingham Jail”— referred to them as “the disinherited children of God.” The marches became known as the Children’s Crusade.

Memories of that tumultuous time came back this past weekend, during a three-day symposium marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Birmingham campaign sponsored by the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. Birmingham, 1963, was known as Bombingham: there had been some fifty dynamite attacks on black homes since the end of the Second World War. Birmingham had another label: the most segregated city in the South. Black people could spend their money in downtown stores but were not being hired or served. Continue reading  Via The New Yorker

50 Years Ago: 1963

Charles Moore:   Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy Walk Toward Their Arrest, Birmingham, Alabama, April 16, 1963

Newseum opens exhibit featuring Martin Luther King Birmingham, Alabama jail cell door

A casting of the original jail cell door behind which the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was confined after his April 1963 arrest for leading non-violent protests in Birmingham, Alabama, is seen at the Newseum in Washington on February 1, 2013. To celebrate the beginning of Black History Month, the Newseum opened "Jailed in Birmingham," a new exhibit featuring the casting of the original jail cell door. It was in this cell that the civil rights leader penned his historic letter defending civil disobedience. The "Letter From Birmingham Jail," written in response to a statement by a group of eight white Alabama clergymen, includes the now famous quote, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." AFP PHOTO/Nicholas KAMM

 

Via artdaily.org

WASHINGTON, DC.- To celebrate the beginning of Black History Month, today the Newseum opens "Jailed in Birmingham," a new exhibit featuring a casting of the original jail cell door behind which the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was confined after his April 1963 arrest for leading nonviolent protests in Birmingham, Ala. It was in this cell that the civil rights leader penned his historic letter defending civil disobedience. The "Letter From Birmingham Jail," written in response to a statement by a group of eight white Alabama clergymen, includes the now-famous quote, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

The door on display is a bronze casting made from the original door to King's cell in the Birmingham city jail. The exhibit also features one of the first publications of the letter, a 1963 pamphlet published by the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group. The exhibit is on display in the Newseum's News Corporation News History Gallery.

On Saturday, Feb. 2, at 2:30 p.m., Chris Jenkins, editor of The RootDC, and award-winning video journalist Garrett Hubbard will discuss King's legacy during a special Inside Media program. The two collaborated on a Washington Post video series, "BrotherSpeak," which explores the experiences of black men in America. Inside Media programs are free with paid admission to the Newseum, and seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis.

This year will mark a number of milestone anniversaries of key events in U.S. history, and the Newseum will debut new exhibits to highlight them. From March 1 to 14, a special, free exhibit will illustrate the landmark 1913 women's suffrage parade on Pennsylvania Avenue through newspaper front pages and photos of the historic event. "Marching for Women's Rights" will be on view to the public in front of the Newseum in the museum's Today's Front Pages cases.

Later this year, the Newseum will mark the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy with two new exhibits and an original documentary chronicling the presidency, family life and death of America's 35th president. The Newseum will host public programs and special events about the Kennedys throughout 2013 to enhance the visitor experience. The JFK exhibits and film will be on display April 12, 2013, through Jan. 5, 2014.

 

 

Related: "1963" exhibition at Monroe Gallery of Photography, April 12 - June 23, 2013