BILL EPPRIDGE - 1938 - 2013 - AN AMERICAN TREASURE

 

Bill Eppridge, Santa Fe, 2009

Photo by David Marks


"What a sad day for photography when we loose Bill Eppridge" --Bob Gomel


The New YorkTimes: Bill Eppridge, Who Captured Powerful ’60s Images, Dies at 75

The Baltimore Sun: Remembering photographer Bill Eppridge

The Globe and Mail: Photographer Bill Eppridge: an eyewitness to moments in history

RFK Center:  Deepest Condolences on the Passing of Bill Eppridge

Missouri School of Journalism: Remembering Bill Eppridge

Sports Illustrated: Tribute to Photographer Bill Eppridge

New York Times Lens: The Moment a Photographer Became a Historian

BBC: Bill Eppridge, US photojournalist who captured Robert Kennedy assassination, dies

The Los Angeles Times: Bill Eppridge dies at 75; took famed photo of RFK after shooting

Time LightBox: In Memoriam: Iconic LIFE Photographer Bill Eppridge (1938-2013)

CBS News: Bill Eppridge, photographer at RFK assassination, dies;
In this 2008 interview, he talks about the moment Kennedy was shot.

BBC: Bill Eppridge, US photojournalist who captured Robert Kennedy assassination, dies

National Press Photographers Association: Life Magazine Legend Bill Eppridge, 75

Herald Scotland: "Bill Eppridge was a photojournalist who took what is considered to be one of the greatest news pictures of all time"

Associated Press: Photographer at RFK assassination dies in Conn

PDN: Obituary: Photographer Bill Eppridge, LIFE Photographer, Sixties Chronicler, Age 75

NPR: Bill Eppridge, Photographer Who Captured RFK's Death, Dies at 75

 

ABC News: Bill Eppridge, Legendary RFK Photographer, Dies

"The world mourns one of the finest and most iconic photographers of our time."

Washington Post: Photographer Bill Eppridge, who captured images of mortally wounded RFK, dies in Conn. at 75

Washington Post National: Bill Eppridge, Life magazine photographer, dies at 75

CNN: Photographer Bill Eppridge

CNN: Photos: People we lost in 2013

AFP: Photographer who captured Robert Kennedy assassination dies

NPPA: Life Magazine Legend Bill Eppridge, 75

Danbury News-Times:  Bill Eppridge, iconic New Milford photographer, dead at 75

Stanford Advocate Slideshow:  The iconic images of Bill Eppridge

Mass Live/The Republican: LIFE magazine photographer Bill Eppridge dead at 75
 

Elizabeth Avedon: BILL EPPRIDGE: 1938-2013

From his first college newspaper, University of Toronto's The Varsity:
Pages from the Past: Bill Eppridge

"The man could shoot anything. And he did. Goodbye, Bill. And thanks."

THE HISTORIC MASTER VINTAGE PRINT OF ROBERT KENNEDY SHOT

 

Bill Eppridge was one of the most accomplished photojournalists of the Twentieth Century and  captured some of the most significant moments in American history: he covered wars, political campaigns, heroin addiction, the arrival of the Beatles in the United States, Vietnam, Woodstock, the summer and winter Olympics, and perhaps the most dramatic moment of his career - the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy in Los Angeles. His most recent project was to record the disappearance of the American Family Farm and he was as passionate about this subject as he was any other.
 

It would be difficult to overstate the importance of Bill Eppridge's visual contribution to American History. A recent retrospective of his work at Monroe gallery was titled: “Bill Eppridge: An American Treasure”. He was indeed a treasure, and he is already missed.  --Sidney and Michelle Monroe

Bill Eppridge is a sobering reminder of the necessity of a common history to a civilized society.

 

 

Reposted from Bill Eppridge's good friend Dave Burnett.

It's hard to write or even to read the words about the passing of Bill Eppridge. A little older than I was, to me and my generation (the late sixty somethings) Bill was always one of those guys to whom we could point and realize that THIS GUY was the photo journalist you wanted to be. Tough, dedicated, a rare sense of humor, willing to share and guide (he once gave me one of the kindest beratings over some pictures I had in a round-up piece to which LIFE had assigned both of us..) it was never snarky, since he didn't need to be snarky about anything. Even when he was dealt a lousy hand with health issues, he kept motoring ahead, and was never, ever, without a Nikon of some sort to catch that inevitable fleeting moment. I only once got to share a fishing line with him, in Thomas Mangelsen's back yard. He kept trying to show me how to throw the line in so that some clueless fish might forget ...to reject me. I have a feeling that the 'fishing Bill' was a whole different side of him, and sorry I missed it. He and Adrienne were a great couple. The last time we hung with them was in NY when Bill, Melanie Burford and I judged the N Y Press photographers contest a year and a half ago. It was a blast to see what was, and wasn't acceptable to Bill. He had high standards for his craft, and was probably tougher on himself than anyone else. Bill had one of those great grins: it was somewhere between shit-eating and cat swallowing canary. In fact it might have even been canary swallows cat. It was as if there was always one more story to tell, and he'd just heard the punch line, and wanted to be the one to share it. I'm sorry we won't have him around to tell some of those stories. He was a master at it in all ways.



MAY 17, 1954: BROWN vs BOARD OF EDUCATION DECIDED

Linda Brown (L), the 10 years old, who was refused admission to white elementary school, and her 6-yr-old sister Terry Lynn walking along railroad tracks to bus which will take them to segregated Monroe Elementary School.

Carl Iwasaki's assignment for LIFE magazine was to photograph the Brown Sisters starting school during the time of the Brown vs. Board of Education trial. This essay ultimately was one of Iwasaki's most poignant and significant. The remarkable photograph of Linda Brown and her younger sister walking to school is one of the more iconic photographs representing the early civil rights struggles of the 1950s. Recently, Iwasaki, now 87,  remarked about this photo, "I distinctly remember tagging along with Linda and her sister on their 20-minute walk to school. I spent two days on the assignment and recall that it seemed curious that there was virtually no other photo coverage of the Brown family. I had a hunch as I worked that I was covering a history-making story."

In this landmark court case, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren delivered the unanimous ruling that State-sanctioned segregation of public schools was a violation of the 14th Amendment and was therefore unconstitutional. Handed down on May 17, 1954, the unanimous (9–0) decision stated that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."

This historic decision marked the end of the "separate but equal" precedent set by the Supreme Court nearly 60 years earlier and served as a catalyst for expanding the civil rights movement during the decade of the 1950s and paved the way for significant opportunities for African Americans in our society—especially for equal justice, fairness and education.


Japanese-American Carl Iwasaki took up photography as a middle school student and began receiving assignments for the student newspaper and yearbook as he entered high school. His development, though, was interrupted when he and his family were forced into a prison camp in Wyoming by the War Relocation Authority. This arm of the government was designed to protect American soil during WWII from potentially dangerous Japanese infiltrators and locked thousands of people up for no other reason than their race.

While the experience was not a pleasant one, it did put Iwasaki in line for his first commission. Upon his release, in 1943, he was hired to take photographs for the WRA, chronicling life inside the camps and the relief experienced upon release. Working from Denver, he took over 1300 photographs for the project and gained enough on-the-job training to pursue a full-time photography career after the war. Iwasaki worked for Life, Time and Sports Illustrated, often drawn to stories about the marginalized and disenfranchised; his photos of the civil rights movement are some of the most affecting.

Charles Moore: Civil Rights and Beyond

Via La Lettre de la Photographie


Charles Moore (1931- 2010) is the most important civil rights era photographer. His searing images of conflict between demonstrators and law enforcement helped propel landmark civil rights legislation.


Moore, the son of a Baptist preacher and car salesman, was born in Hackleburg, Alabama, not far from the birthplace of Helen Keller. In 1958, at 27 years old, as a photographer for the Montgomery Advertiser in Alabama, Moore was on hand to photograph the arrest of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. by two policemen. His photos of the event were distributed nationwide by the Associated Press, and one was published in Life magazine. This photo pushed the regional story into a national debate. It also launched Moore’s long, historic career producing images of the civil rights movement for a nation that would be “shocked and shaken in their conscience” by the images Moore put in their hands.

Over the next seven years, Moore made some of the most significant pictures of the civil rights movement. As a contract photographer for Life magazine, Moore traveled the South to cover the evolving struggle. His photographs helped bring the reality of the situation to the magazine’s huge audience, which at the time comprised over half the adults in the United States.

Some of the major civil rights era events that Moore covered:

the early efforts of Dr. King to desegregate Montgomery, Alabama, 1958-60;

the violent reaction to the enrollment of James Meredith as the first black student at the University of Mississippi, 1962;

the Freedom March from Tennessee to Mississippi, 1963;

the campaign to desegregate Birmingham, Alabama, 1963;

voter registration drives in Mississippi, 1963-1964;

Ku Klux Klan activities in North Carolina, 1965;

and the marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, 1965.

Moore also photographed the civil war in the Dominican Republic, political violence in Venezuela and Haiti, and the Vietnam conflict. In 1989, Charles Moore received the Kodak Crystal Eagle Award for Impact in Photojournalism. Moore died in March 2010, at age 79, in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.

His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Chrysler Museum, Norfolk; the High Museum, Atlanta; the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC; The Menil Collection, Houston; and many others.

Recently, the Steven Kasher gallery in New York present the most comprehensive exhibition of photography by Charles Moore ever undertaken by a gallery or museum. The exhibition, Charles Moore: Civil Rights and Beyond, featured approximately 60 prints, mostly vintage, drawn from the photographer’s estate.

APRIL 4, 1968: DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING ASSASSINATED

Joseph Louw:  Dr. Martin Luther King assassination, Memphis,Tenn., April 4, 1968

Steve Schapiro: Martin Luther King Jr's Motel Room Hours After He Was Shot, Memphis, Tennessee 1968

Established in 1968 by Coretta Scott King, The King Center is the official, living memorial dedicated to the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

PHOTO LA, DAY 2: THE ANNIVERSARY OF MARTIN LUTHER KING'S BIRTHDAY

Today is the anniversary of Martin Luther King's birthday.

Monroe Gallery, Booth A-102 at Photo LA.

Third row from left, top is a rare vintage print of the Funeral Procession for Martin Luther King by Lynn Pelham; below is Charles Moore's iconic photograph of  Martin Luther King, Jr. being "Arrested on a Loitering Charge, Montgomery, September 3, 1958"; below is Steve Schapiro's photograph of the Freedom Bus Riders from the summer of 1964.

And, Bill Eppridge's gripping photographs from the Neshoba Civil Rights Murders. To the right, Steve Schapiro's photograph of Martin Luther King during the Selma March, Bob Gomel's classic photograph of Malcolm X and Cassius Clay the night before Clay would declare his conversion to Islam and changing his name to "Muhammad Ali", and Rosa Parks.

Next right row: Grey Villet's photographs of the Little Rock Nine, Martin Luther King, and Steve Schapiro's shocking photograph of Segregationists in 1964.

More updates from Photo LA soon.

AS TIME GOES BY: Woodstock, August 15 - 17, 1969

A gallery of photographs by Bill Eppridge and John Dominis, “Woodstock: Life’s Best Photos,” was published this time last year by Life.com.

Bill Eppridge, who photographed the Woodstock Music and Art Fair 41 years ago, remembers it as a beautiful coda to a painful decade.

"For me, it was a visual feast, a never-ending succession of moments that is impossible to forget,” he says.

Mr. Eppridge, now 71 and renowned as a teacher and mentor, joined Life magazine as a staff photographer in the early ’60s and stayed until the magazine folded in 1972. He covered many of the most important stories of the time, including the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War and Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign. It was Mr. Eppridge who made the iconic image of a stunned busboy holding the senator moments after he was shot. He collaborated with the reporter James Mills on a picture essay and article in 1965 that followed the lives of two young drug addicts in New York. (The next year, Mr. Mills published his account as “The Panic in Needle Park,” which was made into a movie in 1971.)

In the accompanying audio slide show, Mr. Eppridge speaks about being accepted at Woodstock even though he represented an established and powerful institution — as Life was in its day. “They knew who I was but they didn’t care,” he recalls.

It was not the first time he’d been accepted under unorthodox circumstances. George P. Hunt, the managing editor of Life magazine, told this story behind “Needle Park” in 1965, when Mr. Mills and Mr. Eppridge briefly became “denizens of the junkie world”:

Eppridge, in fact, came so much to look the part that he was picked up by the narcos in a hotel lobby; they thought he had stolen both his cameras and Life credentials and were about to haul him off when Mills (who looks more like a cop) came up to straighten things out.

©The New York Times

Bill Eppridge: "An American Treasure" is on exhibit at Monroe Gallery of Photography through September 27. See a related review from the Albuquerque Journal here. 

BILL EPPRIDGE: AN AMERICAN TREASURE ON AMERICA'S BIRTHDAY

©Bill Eppridge: Bobby Kennedy campaigns in Indiana during May of 1968, with various aides and friends: former prizefighter Tony Zale and (right of Kennedy) N.F.L. stars Lamar Lundy, Rosey Grier, and Deacon Jones

Monroe Gallery of Photography is honored to announce a very special exhibition of photographs by the renowned photojournalist Bill Eppridge. Mr. Eppridge will be our guest at the opening reception in his honor on Friday, July 2, from 5 to 7 PM. Mr. Eppridge will also be in the gallery Saturday, July 3. This is a rare opportunity to meet one of the most accomplished photojournalists of the Twentieth Century. The exhibition will continue through September 26.

Bill Eppridge has captured some of the most significant moments in American history: he has covered wars, political campaigns, civil rights, heroin addiction, the arrival of the Beatles in the United States, the summer and winter Olympics, Vietnam, Woodstock, (see the special 40th Anniversary audio and slide shows from the New York Times and Life), and perhaps the most dramatic moment of his career - the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy in Los Angeles. Over the last 50 years  his work has appeared in numerous publications, including National Geographic, Life, and Sports Illustrated. He is the recipient of the 2009 Missouri Honor Medal for Lifetime Distinguished Service in Journalism awarded by The Missouri School of Journalism.

©Bill Eppridge: The Chaney family as they depart for the burial of James Chaney, Meridian, Mississippi, August 7, 1964

Recently, The Beatles! Backstage and Behind the Scenes, a photography exhibition of Bill's images of the band was displayed at the Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C, before starting a world tour. In 2008, his photographs were included in the exhibition Road to Freedom: Photographs from the Civil Rights Movement 1956 - 1968 at the High Museum, Atlanta, Georgia, later traveling to the Skirball Center in Los Angeles and the Bronx Museum of the Arts in New York. Additionally, Eppridge's photographs are included in the exhibitions Voyeurism, Surveillance, and the Camera since 1870; Tate Modern, London; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2010); and A Star is Born: Photography and Rock Music Since Elvis Presley, Museum Folkwang, Germany (2010).

View the exhibition on-line here.

REVIEW: " For anyone interested in the history of this mixed bag of a nation, "American Edge" the museum-quality Steve Schapiro photography exhibition at Monroe Gallery is not to be missed."

©The Albuquerque Journal
June 11, 2010

HISTORY THROUGH THE LENS


By Malin Wilson-Powell
For the Journal

For anyone interested in the history of this mixed bag of a nation, "American Edge" the museum-quality Steve Schapiro photography exhibition at Monroe Gallery through June 27 is not to be missed. The majority of 57 potent black-and-white images are from the tumultuous '60s, the beginning decade of Schapiro's lifetime in photojournalism. Born in New York City in 1944, Schapiro shot his earliest self-initiated documentary essays "Narcotics Addiction in East Harlem" and "Arkansas Migrant Workers" in 1960.

These independent projects brought him assignments from the big picture magazines of the day, including LIFE, Look and Rolling Stone. Schapiro was one of those meddling northerners who went south in 1965 to join the Selma to Montgomery marchers who were seeking the right to register to vote. The photographer heeded local advice to cut his hair and not to wear his leather jacket. Over the five days it took to complete the 54-mile march, the crowd grew from 4,000 to more than 25,000. Armed with his handheld 35 mm camera, Schapiro found the courage in those he documented (and in himself) to join a campaign that was met with overwhelming violence and that resulted in the deaths of two men — the Rev. James Reeb, a white pastor who was beaten to death, and Jimmy Lee Jackson, a black activist who was shot by a police officer.

While there are many differences that divide America's epochal 1960s from today, the similarities are deep enough to lay claim to the current American moment, where "edges" seem to have proliferated and feel ever more vertiginous. Although the '60s was an era when Barack Obama's election to president was an impossible dream, it was a time when many Americans believed they were making inevitable progress toward equality. A "post-racial" society with the end of racism and xenophobia seemed to be in site. More than 40 years later, tolerance seems the impossible dream. Despite our being globalized and electronically linked now, Schapiro's 1964 image of follow-the-leader white men in Florida carrying their "Segregation Forever" sign resonates with up-to-the minute virulence of anti-immigration hysteria, as well as the incendiary and rampant hate speech against our black president.

This exhibition appropriates the title of Schapiro's first and very deluxe monograph published in 2000 by Arena Editions (a now defunct press founded in Santa Fe). More than half of the silver prints in the gallery were first published as art in this book, including the two iconic images chosen for the end papers. On view (and used as the book's front end papers) is the ominous "Robert Kennedy in Berkeley, Calif., 1966," with Kennedy's dark silhouette looming over a sea of faces turned toward him and the sunshine. It is a prescient image of Kennedy's assassination two years later, when his demise left a huge black hole in the American political landscape and psyche.

Robert Kennedy at Berkeley, California, 1966

Also on view (and used as the book's back end papers) is the achingly resonant "Jerome Smith, Mississippi, 1965." No one could ask for a more perfect composition. Smith, a young Civil Rights worker in overalls, is framed in profile by his church doorway in the "thinker's pose," precisely echoing the pose of a pondering Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane as depicted in the church's stained glass window.

Schapiro has always acknowledged his debt to the renowned W. Eugene Smith, the photographer he tried to emulate, as he did Henri Cartier-Bresson. His monograph is dedicated simply to "Smith." Yet, for all his predecessors' greatness, Schapiro's work is not as sentimental as Smith's or as distant as Cartier-Bresson's. Schapiro's work is more self-conscious and feels more embedded in his generation's disorienting times. In light of earlier photojournalists, the tone of Schapiro's work is closer to WPA-era Dorothea Lange and Hungarian-born André Kertész.

Three Men, New York, 1961

In addition to multiple images of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, Schapiro captured many anonymous players who had their moment on the stage of the '60s, such as a bloody student at the Columbia University riots, lonely supermarket parking lot picketers, stoned flower children in Haight Ashbury, and frenzied go-go dancers. These unnamed actors are shot with the same involvement as his celebrity images, including Warhol's factory, the Kennedys' Camelot, James Baldwin, Rosa Parks, Janis Joplin, Ike and Tina Turner, Alan Ginsberg, and Samuel Becket. After popular magazine assignments started to wane, Schapiro began working for both the music and movie industries shooting Hollywood stars on the set, and his celebrity images retain the on-the-road grit of his photo journal essays.

Midnight Cowboy, New York,1969

Schapiro photographs are black-and-white silver prints (in limited editions of 25) and the magical emergence of images from negatives with wet chemicals darkroom, before transition to the now-dominant flat-screen digital technology. The tremendous power of his work reminded me of a very recent symposium (April 22) organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Thirteen leading American artists, curators and critics were invited to address the rather silly question "Is Photography Over," a variation on the old straw dog "Is Painting Dead?" Of course, this is an ever-ready topic raised by institutions and academics that need issues to discuss. But, just as with every other medium an artist chooses to use, yes, the medium is dead. Every medium is dead. It becomes art precisely when the artist breathes new life into it. Fortunately, for those of us who like looking at art, the medium is a tool of the artist and not a ghetto.

Also, if you like Steven Schapiro's photographs, keep your eyes open for the traveling exhibition "The High Road to Freedom: Photographs from the Civil Rights Movement, 1956-1968," organized by the High Museum of Art in 2008. Currently on view at the Bronx Museum of Art in New York City, review here.) The exhibition prominently features Schapiro's images documenting the legal end to American apartheid and it is currently "on the road," and, hopefully, like America, a work still in progress.

Exhibition continues through June 27
See the exhibition on-line here.

Read more: ABQJOURNAL NORTH/VENUE: History through the lens http://www.abqjournal.com/north/venuenorth/112255382101northvenue06-11-10.htm#ixzz0qXr0FbUC

STEVE SCHAPIRO: AMERICAN EDGE

Martin Luther King Jr, Alabama, 1965

Santa Fe--Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, is honored to announce an extensive exhibition of more than 50 significant photographs by Steve Schapiro of events that would shape a generation, and people who were considered among the most dynamic of this past century. The exhibition opens with a reception for the photographer on Friday, April 16, from 5 to 7 PM, and will continue through June 27. View the exhibition on-line here.

Steve Schapiro discovered photography at age of nine at a summer camp. Excited by the camera's potential, he would spend the next decades prowling the streets of his native New York trying to emulate the work of the great French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson. Schapiro was a disciple of the great photographer W. Eugene Smith, and shared Smith's passion for black and white documentary work. From the beginning of Schapiro’s career, he had already set a mission for himself: to chronicle the “American Life”. One of the most respected American documentary photographers, Steve Schapiro has photographed major stories for most of the world’s most prominent magazines, including Life, Look, Time, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone, People, and Paris Match.

Schapiro's photographs show the collective American psyche torn apart by the turbulent 1960's; the increasing disparity between rich and poor; racial and class conflict; the burgeoning middle class and its materialistic desires; in short, the American Edge.

Fifth Avenue, New York, 1961

His career in photography began in 1960 with personal documentary projects on "Arkansas Migrant Workers" and "Narcotics Addiction in East Harlem". The New York Times Magazine published his migrant photographs as a cover story which resulted in bringing electricity to a farm camp that previously had only kerosene lamps. In the 60's and 70's, he traveled extensively throughout the United States for Life and other magazines doing stories on American culture. Schapiro spent several weeks in the South with James Baldwin and became involved in many civil rights stories including the Selma March and covering Martin Luther King; he traveled with Bobby Kennedy on his Senate campaign and Presidential campaign (including a stop in Albuquerque); and did photo essays on Haight Ashbury, the Pine Ridge Sioux Indian Reservation, and Protest in America. He photographed Andy Warhol and the New York art scene, John and Jacqueline Kennedy, poodles, beauty parlors, and performances at the famous Apollo Theater in New York. He also collaborated on projects for record covers and related art.

As picture magazines declined in the 1970's and 80's he continued documentary work but also produced advertising material, publicity stills and posters for films, including, The Godfather, Rambo, The Way We Were, Risky Business, Taxi Driver, and Midnight Cowboy. From 2000 through 2003 he was a contributing photographer for American Radio Works (Minneapolis Public Radio) producing on-line documentary projects, including: “Viet Nam Vets,” “The Mentally Disturbed and the Prison System” and “Survivors of Jim Crow.”

Monographs include American Edge (2000), “Schapiro’s Heroes” (2007), "The Godfather Family Album - Photographs by Steve Schapiro" (2008); limited edition books of Chinatown and Taxi Driver will be published by Taschen in the near future.

Since the Metropolitan Museum of Art's seminal 1989 exhibition, "Harlem on my Mind", Schapiro's photographs have appeared in museum exhibitions world-wide, including the High Museum of Art's "Road to Freedom", currently on exhibit at the Bronx Museum and travelling the United States.

Supermarket Protest, New Jesery, 1963

UPDATE: AIPAD PHOTOGRAPHY SHOW OPENS; MONROE GALLERY IN NEW YORK TIMES REVIEW

The 30th annual Association of International Photography Art Dealers Photography Show is now open, through Sunday, March 21. The show is at the Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Avenue (between 66th and 67th Streets).

Friday's New York Times has a review of the show mentioning Eddie Adams iconic Street Execution of a Viet Cong Prisoner, shown in a very rare sequence of three prints. Also on exhibit at Monroe Gallery is the shocking burned master print of Robert F. Kennedy's assassination, as shown in this blog.


We have welcomed many of our esteemed photographers to our booth, # 317. Here are just a few highlights, we hope to see you Sunday - John Dominis will be among our guests.

 

Woodstock Reunion: Bill Eppridge and Elliott Landy

Alyssa Adams, widow of Eddie Adams, Adrienne Arrichio, and Bill Eppridge

Dorothy and Guy Gillette

Ken Regan and Bill Eppridge

RENOWNED CIVIL RIGHTS PHOTOGRAPHER CHARLES MOORE HAS DIED

http://monroegallery.blogspot.com/2010/03/monroe-gallery-at-aipad-photography.htmlBy Michelle Rupe Eubanks

Staff Writer
Copyright THE TIMES DAILY

 Saturday, March 13, 2010 at 3:30 a.m.

Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Charles Moore died Thursday at his home near West Palm Beach, Fla.

He was 79.

Moore was born in Hackelburg and rose to fame in the 1950s and 1960s as a result of his almost accidental career as a photojournalist.

As the lone photographer on the scene at Martin Luther King Jr.'s arrest in 1958, he captured the violence and emotion inherent in the scene. In the years that followed, Moore would take some of the most enduring shots of the Civil Rights Movement: the Selma march, the riots at Ole Miss and the tragedy of the hoses and dogs turned on those in Kelly Ingram Park in Birmingham.

For much of his career, he worked for Life magazine.

Shannon Wells, the photographer at the University of North Alabama who worked with Moore throughout her career, said his influence on photography will not soon be forgotten.

Moore was often in Florence to share his work and expertise.

"What can you say? He was an icon," she said. "He always took the time to teach and mentor other photographers, especially young photographers. He always wanted to share his career."

In 1991, a chronological collection of his photographs as well as his biography was printed as "Powerful Days: The Civil Rights Photography of Charles Moore."

Andrew Young, who wrote the introduction to the book, said the Moore's photographs are the legacy of what those who lived through the Civil Rights Movement endured in order to find equality.

"Many of us were treated like rats, even during the most daunting days of the movement, as Moore's photographs of the fire hose attacks in Birmingham's Kelly Ingram park graphically illustrate," he writes. "All of us must hope and pray that the lessons learned and the lives lost during the first years of the movement will be remembered and honored to infinity."

A memorial service for Moore is planned for later this year.

Monroe Gallery of Photography will exhibit several of Charles Moore's photographs during the AIPAD Photography Show March 18 - 21.

A DAY IN THE LIFE

Bill Eppridge: Beatles Press Conference, 1964

Photos of the Fab Four's first visit to North America show the lads at their cheeky best

 
(C) The Winninpeg Free Press
By: Alison Mayes
 
On Feb. 7, 1964, a contract photographer for LIFE magazine was assigned to capture the arrival in North America of four mop-topped lads from Liverpool.


Bill Eppridge was only 25 years old, but already an experienced photojournalist. He and the other photographers who waited for the Beatles' plane to land in New York assumed the band would be "a crew of weirdos" -- likely dishevelled drug addicts.

Everybody was waiting to have a good laugh," Eppridge, now 71, recalls by phone from his home in Connecticut.


"Then the door of the plane opened, and out come these four young gentlemen in dark suits and ties, so neatly dressed you couldn't believe it... It surprised the hell out of all of us."

Eppridge, who would go on to capture some of most iconic images of the troubled 1960s, spent several days shooting the witty, carefree John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr -- and the mounting Beatlemania that surrounded them -- as they toured Central Park, hung out in their suite at the Plaza Hotel, gave their five-song debut performance on the Ed Sullivan Show on Feb. 9, rode a train to Washington, D.C. and performed at the Washington Coliseum.

CBS staff photographers also documented the band's every move, continuing as the quartet -- aged 20 to 23 -- frolicked in Miami Beach, Fla., and made their second Ed Sullivan appearance there on Feb. 16, live from the Deauville Hotel.

The week that revolutionized pop music is recalled in The Beatles! Backstage and Behind the Scenes, a touring, Florida-based exhibition of 84 never-before-published black-and-white photos. The show opened Friday at the Manitoba Museum and runs to April 11.

It features 38 of Eppridge's images and 46 from the CBS archives, displayed on walls painted red, white and blue to evoke the Union Jack. The museum has set up a mock-1960s living room with a vintage TV to bring back memories of the historic Sullivan broadcasts.

The show reflects the museum's recent commitment to bring in high-profile exhibitions that "show the world to Manitobans," such as the Dinosaur Dynasty and Robots + Us shows, which attracted about 18,000 and 12,500 visitors respectively.

Eppridge estimates that he shot more than 2,000 frames of the Beatles. LIFE published only three or four. The unused shots were stored in LIFE's archives, then reverted to Eppridge when the magazine folded. He hadn't looked at them in years, he says, when the exhibition curators (including his friend John Filo, who shot the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of the Kent State massacre) asked him to select some for this 2001 show.

The distinguished Eppridge was later behind the lens at Woodstock and in Vietnam. He covered the funeral of civil-rights activist James Chaney in Mississippi, shot a landmark photo essay on heroin addiction in Needle Park, and took the iconic photo of a busboy cradling Robert Kennedy seconds after he was fatally shot.

By comparison, he says, the Beatles images bring back an innocent, joyful moment in U.S. history. The Fab Four were not the least bit jaded as they gamely posed in matchy-matchy outfits -- even goofy deck shoes and short terrycloth beach robes.

"It was totally delightful," remembers Eppridge, who never met any of the four again. "They were enjoying the ride. I never heard a complaint. I found them generally unaware of their importance.

"They were truly funny, like four comedians. They were really tight, mentally."

The lads are seen clowning on the train, with Harrison borrowing a porter's uniform and serving drinks. "It was genuine," says Eppridge. "They decided it was going to be fun."

The photographer remembers being jolted by the freshness of the band's sound. "When I'm working, I use one sense: my eyes. To get me out of that mode is difficult. But at times, their music took me right out of that."

In a few photos Lennon wears sunglasses and a dark cap -- perhaps a hint that he would rebel against the group's wholesome, uniform image. Eppridge says he didn't pick up on any rebellion. But he felt Lennon had a greater presence than the others. "Lennon seemed to be bigger... He just seemed to have more enormity to him."

Eppridge says he recognized that the Beatles were going to be fashion icons. One of his photos is a closeup of three pairs of feet in the pointy-toed boots that started a craze.

"I was trying like hell to get four pair in one picture, and I couldn't... because one of them was not feeling well," he says. (Harrison is missing from some of the New York photos because he was resting up with a sore throat.)

Eppridge and LIFE reporter Gail Cameron got their own taste of Beatlemania when they emerged after dark from the Plaza Hotel. Four teenage girls accosted them and asked if they had met the Beatles. When Cameron said yes, the girls inquired whether the lads had signed autographs. The reporter made the mistake of saying that they had actually used her pencil. Then all hell broke loose.

"Those four jumped her so fast!" says the photographer, chuckling. "They knocked her down, trying to get that pencil. I had to toss a couple of them off of her. I grabbed Gail and we took off running down the street."


The Beatles! Backstage and Behind the Scenes

Manitoba Museum, to April 11
190 Rupert Avenue, Winnipeg, MB R3B 0N2, Canada

(204) 956-2830
Beatles show only, $5 (youth/senior/ student $3, family $16)
Ticket price discounted when added to museum, planetarium or science gallery admission

View Bill Eppridge's Beatles collection here. View the current exhibition of photographs of musicians, "The Art of Sound", here.

Bill Eppridge will be the subject of a major retrospective exhibition at Monroe Gallery July 2 - September 26, 2010. His historic Robert Kennedy and James Chaney Funeral photographs will also be on view during the AIPAD Photography Show in New York in Monroe Gallery, Booth # 317.

REMEMBERING MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

On this day, we honor Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King. Jr.

Letter From Birmingham Jail
April 16, 1963

Ernst Haas: Martin Luther King, Birmingham Jail, 1963

"While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work.

...But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid."

Charles Moore: Martin Luther King, Jr. Arrested on a Loitering Charge, Montgomery, September 3, 1958

Steve Schapiro: Martin Luther King, Selma, Alabama, 1965

Stve Schapiro: Martin Luther King, Alabama, 1965

Steve Schapiro: Martin Luther King, Alabama, 1965

Steve Schapiro: On the Road, the Selma March, 1965

Mrs. Cheney and young Ben, James Cheney Funeral
Bill Eppridge


As James Chaney's family awaited the drive to his burial, 12-year-old Ben gazed outward
Bill Eppridge

The Lasting Impact of a Civil Rights Icon's Murder

One of three civil rights workers murdered in Mississippi in 1964 was James Chaney. His younger brother, Ben, would never be the same
By Hank Klibanoff

c. Smithsonian magazine, December 2008

Bill Eppridge, a Life magazine photographer, arrived in Neshoba County shortly after the bodies of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman were pulled from the muck of an earthen dam on August 4, 1964. Inside the Chaney home in nearby Meridian, Eppridge felt that Ben was overwhelmed, "not knowing where he was or where he should have been," he recalls. "That draws you to somebody, because you wonder what is going on there."
On August 7, Eppridge watched as the Chaney family left to bury their eldest son. As they awaited a driver, Fannie Lee Chaney and her husband, Ben Sr., sat in the front seat of a sedan; their daughters, Barbara, Janice and Julia, sat in the back with Ben, who hunched forward so he'd fit.
Eppridge took three frames. As he did so, he could see Ben's bewilderment harden into a cold stare directed right at the lens. "There were a dozen questions in that look," Eppridge says. "As they left, he looked at me and said, three times, 'I'm gonna kill 'em, I'm gonna kill 'em, I'm gonna kill 'em.' "
The frames went unpublished that year in Life; most news photographs of the event showed a sobbing Ben Chaney Jr. inside the church. The one on this page is included in "Road to Freedom," a photography exhibit organized by Atlanta's High Museum and on view through March 9 at the Smithsonian's S. Dillon Ripley Center in Washington, D.C., presented by the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Chaney, now 56, cannot recall what he told Eppridge in 1964, but he remembers being livid that his mother had to suffer and that his father's generation had not risen up years before so that his brother's generation wouldn't have had to. "I know I was angry," he says.
Ben had lost his idol. Nine years older, James Earl Chaney—J.E., Ben called him—had bought Ben his first football uniform and taken him for haircuts. He had taken Ben along as he organized prospective black voters in the days leading to Freedom Summer. Ben, who had been taken into custody himself for demonstrating for civil rights, recalls J.E. walking down the jailhouse corridor to secure his release, calling, "Where's my brother? "
"He treated me," Ben says, "like I was a hero."
After the funeral, a series of threats drove the Chaneys from Mississippi. With help from the Schwerners, Goodmans and others, they moved to New York City. Ben enrolled in a private, majority-white school and adjusted to life in the North. But by 1969 he was restless. In Harlem, he says, he was elated to see black people running their own businesses and determining their own fates. He joined the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army.
In May 1970, two months shy of 18, Chaney and two other young men drove to Florida with a vague plan to buy guns. Soon, five people, including one of their number, were dead in Florida and South Carolina.
Chaney said he didn't even witness any of the slayings. He was acquitted of murder in South Carolina. But in Florida—where the law allows for murder charges to be brought in crimes that result in death—he was convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to three life terms.
One of his first visitors in jail was Bill Eppridge. Before setting up his cameras, Eppridge fired off a quick Polaroid. His editor liked the Polaroid best. Life readers saw Ben Chaney with his eyes framed by prison bars. "He just looks scared," says Eppridge, who, after the weekly Life folded in 1972, went to work for Sports Illustrated.
"I can imagine I was afraid," Chaney says. "I was in jail."
He served 13 years. Paroled in 1983, he started the James Earl Chaney Foundation to clean up his brother's vandalized grave site in Meridian; since 1985, he has worked as a legal clerk for former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, the lawyer who secured his parole. He envisions creating a Chaney, Goodman, Schwerner Center for Human Rights in Meridian.
In 1967, eighteen men faced federal charges of civil rights violations in the slayings of Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman. Seven were convicted by an all-white jury, eight were acquitted and three were released after jurors deadlocked. The state of Mississippi prosecuted no one for 38 years. But in 2005—after six years of new reporting on the case by Jerry Mitchell of the Jackson Clarion-Ledger—a sawmill operator named Edgar Ray Killen was indicted on charges of murder.
On June 21, 2005, exactly 41 years after the three men were killed, a racially integrated jury, without clear evidence of Killen's intent, found him guilty of manslaughter instead. Serving three consecutive 20-year terms, he is the only one of six living suspects to face state charges in the case.
Ben Chaney sees it this way: somewhere out there are men like him—accomplices to murder. He did his time, he says, they should do theirs. "I'm not as sad as I was," he adds. "But I'm still angry."
Hank Klibanoff is the author, with Gene Roberts, of The Race Beat, which received the Pulitzer Prize for history last year.

Monroe Gallery of Photography is honored to represent Bill Eppridge's photography.