The Age of Rage: Protest, Camera, Action

 

Via The Nation

September 21, 2024

"Photography radically acts as a language that speaks for the world’s oppressed and critically functions as a vital visual voice of resistance."

"Photography helps us understand what we are and imagine what we might become...

The fight for equality across the human condition radically evolves out of protest. Beyond the jackboots, the batons, the water cannon, the tear gas, the bullets, the tanks, the fences, the walls, the concentration camps and all means of surveillance, history teaches that what power fears more than anything is a people on the move against injustice. Looking at the history of photography, we can understand that progress across the political terrain of human rights has been difficult. Marginalized bodies, when divided, are vulnerable to capture, control and genocide. Thinking through our past in photographs and decentering the knowledge formations of imperial lenses means that we can critically join or remake the politics of the left intersectional, aligned in mission, and truly inclusive. This will create waves of solidarity and supportive modes of resistance that strategically enable people to embrace the different ecologies of freedom and resist imperialist politics that divide and rule" -- click for full article

Mississippi Freedom Trail unveils new marking in remembrance of the Neshoba county murders of 1964 in Philadelphia

 Via WTOK TV

June 14, 2024

PHILADELPHIA, Miss. (WTOK) - The Mississippi Freedom Trail unveiled its newest marker in Philadelphia.

The marker is in remembrance of the Neshoba county murders of 1964 that featured three men, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, who were participating in an initiative to register black voters but were jailed and later killed by members of the KKK.

News 11 spoke to the mayor of Philadelphia James A. Young who said that it’s a reminder of the past and a marker showing a better future.

“I think it’s a great day. We remember it but when you have markers to remind you of some of the incidents that happened; we never need to forget our history, but as I said in the intro, we should not live in the past but never forget the past. It’s key. I mean every time people pass this marker, they’re gonna remember these guys lost their lives trying to get us registered to vote. So, we should vote every day.” said Mayor Young.

On June 15th, the Neshoba County Coalition will host a program that will honor the 60th anniversary of Freedom Summer and remember the deaths of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner.

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On June 21, 1964, voter registration volunteers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were arrested in Neshoba County, Mississippi following a traffic stop, escorted to the local jail, and held for a number of hours. As the three left town in their car, they were followed by law enforcement and their car was pulled over again. The three were abducted, driven to another location, and shot at close range. The bodies were buried in an earthen dam.

LIFE magazine sent Bill Eppridge to Mississippi immediately after the news broke – he had been covering Pete Seeger at the Newport Folk Festival. Several of Eppridge’s photographs from that time are featured in the exhibit "1964".  Exhibits - 1964 - Monroe - Gallery of Photography (monroegallery.com)

Monroe Gallery exhibit turns the lens to the pivotal year in US history

 Via The Albuquerque Journal

June 9, 2024

Explore ’64

Monroe Gallery exhibit turns the lens to the pivotal year in US history

By Kathaleen Roberts

Assistant Arts Editor

1964 was the year the ’60s really began.

That’s the year American culture fractured and eventually split along ideological lines, establishing the poles of societal debate that are still raging today. The Beatles led a British Invasion of popular music, Muhammad Ali, who called himself “The Greatest,” shocked the world and became the heavyweight champion, three civil rights workers were murdered in Mississippi, and activist Fannie Lou Hamer declared “I’m Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired.” 1964 was a year of remarkable transition that prefigured 60 years of tumultuous change.

Open at Santa Fe’s Monroe Gallery of Photography, “1964” covers a decade of unremitting change and protest that still resonates today.

Sixty years ago, the United States was still recovering from the assassination of John F. Kennedy. 1964 was the year that societal fault lines started to become visible. Politics, civil rights, women’s rights, sexuality, inequality, poverty, Vietnam and youth culture all became flashpoints in societal debate that prefigured 60 years of tumultuous change. Sen. Barry Goldwater’s (nicknamed Mr.

Conservative) campaign for president began a conservative revolution in the Republican Party that still impacts the GOP and American politics today.

“The American elements that we were struggling with then, we are struggling with today,” said Michelle Monroe, gallery co-owner.

“In spite of the times we find ourselves in, we are the same species.”

Parents were rightly shocked to see white, middle- class youths overdose on heroin. Switch the drug to the much more lethal fentanyl today.

In 1964, civil rights activists launched protests, marches and voting drives. Today, Black Lives Matter is attempting to address the same issues of justice, healing and freedom.

Fannie Lou Hamer, a Mississippi sharecropper’s child, was determined to address members of the Mississippi Democratic Convention.

Bill Eppridge: Fannie Lou Hamer, Mississippi Freedom Democratic State Convention in Jackson, Mississippi, August 6, 1964

Sterilized without her permission, she tried to register to vote and was beaten and hospitalized.

She formed the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to comply with convention rules.

President Lyndon “Johnson was so concerned that he announced he was going to give a speech that very day,” Monroe said.

Life magazine photographer Bill Eppridge flew to Meridian, Mississippi, to photograph the aftermath of the murders of activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner by members of the Ku Klux Klan in what became known as the Mississippi Burning murders. Eppridge ask Chaney’s mother what he could photograph and she told him to shoot everything, including her son’s funeral. His shot of Mrs.  Chaney comforting her son Ben crystallizes their grief.

Bill Eppridge: Mrs. Chaney and young Ben, James Chaney funeral, Meridian, Mississippi, 1964

“While he was there, they found those three bodies buried behind a dam that was about to be poured over,” Monroe said.

Bob Gomel: Cassius Clay and Malcolm X, Miami, 1964

Bob Gomel photographed Muhammed Ali (then known as Cassius Clay) celebrating his defeat of Sonny Liston with Malcolm X looking over his shoulder.

“He announced the (name) change the next day,” Monroe said. “He writes that famous line, ‘I don’t have to be what you want me to be.’ Malcolm had pressed him with, ‘You’re a Muslim, but you’re not making a declaration about it and we need you.’” Steve Schapiro’s World’s Fair “Stall In” shows cars blocking a central street to the event by Congress of Racial Equality activists.

Steve Schapiro: CORE "Stall-In" during the World's Fair, New York, 1964

New York had spent millions to host the fair, while Black and Puerto Rican people lived in squalor.

“It did affect the attendance the first day,” Monroe said.

In February, when the nation was still in mourning, the Beatles arrived at Kennedy Airport.

Bill Eppridge: The Beatles wait arrive at Penn Station, NY, February 12, 1964

That was a huge generational catalyst for the rest of the decade,” Monroe said. “Suddenly, everybody had something in common. It began as fandom and moved into an anti-war generation, a generation that wanted to embrace equality, a generation that wanted to embrace women’s equality.

“Those goofballs arrived and created brotherhood, sisterhood. Sports and music have done so much to bring people together.”

“That is such a flashpoint in the fabric of our country,” Monroe said.

On exhibit through June 23, 2024

www.monroegallery.com

History through the lens of legendary photojournalist Bill Eppridge

Via Connecticut Public Radio

By Ray Hardman

June 6, 2024

Barbra Streisand in the dressing room of the Johnny Carson Show (The Tonight Show) January 1963. Photographer Bill Eppridge is standing behind her making a photograph of her reflected in the mirror. Life reporter Chris Welles is on the left behind Streisand.

Listen here

Bill Eppridge and his Nikon camera chronicled some of the most important events of the second half of the 20th century, including his iconic photograph of a dying Robert F. Kennedy shortly after he was shot in 1968.

Eppridge, who lived in Connecticut, died in 2013 at the age of 75. Since then, his widow, Adrienne Aurichio, has been cataloging his enormous body of work — photographs, negatives and other correspondence dating from his earliest days as a photojournalist.

“There is so much history in there that he didn't want any of that to be lost,” Aurichio said. “There's every note card, every postcard someone sent him, memos from editors all about his work, he saved everything because he said, ‘This is part of my legacy, part of my archive that people will want to look at later.'"

Eppridge was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and lived in New Milford, Connecticut. But he grew up in Richmond, Virginia during segregation.

Aurichio reflected on those formative years.

“Something that stuck with him his whole life was seeing a white policeman get on a bus and make an elderly Black woman move because she was sitting in the front,” Aurichio said. “And he was with his good friend, they were maybe 10. And he said he never forgot that, you know, just the injustice of it.”

Aurichio said that sense of empathy and injustice is evident in all of his work, but especially when he was covering the Civil Rights Movement for Life Magazine in the 1960s.

She showed a picture she recently discovered in Eppridge’s archives, just one example of the historically significant photographs she continues to uncover. The black and white image is a closeup of a Black woman addressing a crowd. Aurichio is convinced the woman is civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, addressing the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party Convention in 1964, which she co-founded.

Julianne Varacchi
Connecticut Public Host Ray Hardman interviews Adrienne Aurichio in Danbury, Conn. for “Where ART Thou?” as they look at Bill Eppridge's photograph of civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer from 1964. Aurichio is the widow and publishing collaborator of famed photojournalist Bill Eppridge. Adrienne and Bill moved to New Milford in 2004, where Adrienne still lives.

“I did some research and found her in some news photos,” Aurichio said. "She was wearing the same dress and she's at the convention and she's singing. And it was only a couple of days after Bill had photographed the funeral of James Chaney.”

James Chaney was one of three civil rights workers killed by the Ku Klux Klan in Philadelphia, Mississippi, in 1964. Aurichio said some 60 years later, it’s still hard to believe that Eppridge, a young white photographer on assignment, actually went to the Chaney house and asked if he could stay with them in the midst of their grief and take pictures. They welcomed him in, and Eppridge captured a series of haunting pictures of James Chaney’s funeral for Life Magazine.

This “Fly on the Wall” approach worked well on another important assignment from earlier that year. In February 1964, Eppridge headed to JFK Airport to photograph a music group from Liverpool, England, called The Beatles, who were making their first trip to the U.S.

Aurichio said the assignment, which was only supposed to last a day, ended up lasting six days. Eppridge captured not only the youthful exuberance of the "Fab Four" on their first visit to the states, but also the fever pitch reactions of the hordes of fans fully in the throes of “Beatlemania.”

Bill Eppridge/©Estate Of Bill Eppridge

The Beatles with Ed Sullivan, February 8, 1964. New York City.

Eppridge continued to cover important assignments — Vietnam, revolutions in Central and South America, and Woodstock — but his defining moment as a photojournalist came while covering the presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968.

“When he first heard the gunshots, he knew instantly it was a gun, and he immediately pushed forward to try and see what had happened,” Aurichio said.

Kennedy was assassinated after addressing a crowd of supporters gathered at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Aurichio said Eppridge was one of the first to enter the hotel kitchen where Bobby Kennedy lay dying.

“It's somewhat extraordinary that he could make that picture,” Aurichio said. “So he had to have the wherewithal in a split second to say, ‘OK, I can't do much. There are other people closing in. What can I do as a photographer? This is history.’ And in his mind, he thought it really has to be documented because you don't want questions later, as there always are with JFK’s assassination.”

The photograph, that of a dying Kennedy laying in a circle of overhead light, his head cradled by a kitchen worker, is one of the most iconic photographs of the 20th century.

Aurichio said Eppridge never stopped taking photographs.

Even during his long bout with pancreatic cancer, Eppridge continued to be a “fly on the wall,” capturing the beauty and spontaneity of his subjects, just as he had done for decades.

Bill Eppridge's photographs are featured in the current "1964" exhibition though June 23, 2024. More of Eppridge's work may be found here.

Documentary filmmaker Nancy Buirski won Emmy and Peabody Awards for “The Loving Story,” about a Virginia couple’s successful challenge to a ban on interracial marriage, has died at 78.

 Via The New York Times

September 1, 2023

Grey Villet: Mildred and Richard Loving, 1965

Nancy Buirski, an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning documentary filmmaker whose eye was honed as a still photographer and picture editor, died on Wednesday at her home in Manhattan. She was 78.

After founding the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in 1998 at Duke University in Durham, N.C., and directing it for a decade, Ms. Buirski (pronounced BURR-skee) made her own first documentary, “The Loving Story,” in 2011.

The film explored the case of Mildred and Richard Loving, who faced imprisonment because their interracial marriage in 1958 was illegal in Virginia. (She was part-Black and part-Native American, and he was white.)

Their challenge to the law resulted in a landmark civil rights ruling by the United States Supreme Court in 1967 that voided state anti-miscegenation laws.

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"Years earlier, as a picture editor on the international desk at The New York Times, Ms. Buirski was credited with choosing the image that won the newspaper its first Pulitzer Prize for photography, in 1994. After seeking a photograph to accompany an article on war and famine in southern Sudan, she choose one by Kevin Carter, a South African photojournalist, of an emaciated toddler collapsing on the way to a United Nations feeding center as a covetous vulture lurked in the background.

Ms. Buirski commended the photo to Nancy Lee, The Times’ picture editor at the time. She then proposed it, strongly, for the front page, because, she recalled telling another editor, “This is going to win the paper’s first-ever Pulitzer Prize for photography.”

The photograph ended up appearing on an inside page in the issue of March 26, 1993, but the reaction from readers, concerned about the child’s fate, was so strong that The Times published an unusual editors’ note afterward explaining that the child had continued to the feeding center after Mr. Carter chased away the vulture.

The picture won the Pulitzer in the feature photography category. (Mr. Carter died by suicide a few months later at 33.)"

Full obituary here.

View Grey Villet's photographs of Richard and Mildred Loving here.

"GOOD TROUBLE" Exhibit extended through September 30

 

"Good Trouble" is an exhibition of photographs that register the power of individuals to inspire movements and illustrates the power of protest from a deeply human perspective. In this exhibition, we are reminded of the power of photographs to propel action and inspire change.  The exhibition has been extended through September 30, 2023.

Protest is an invaluable way to speak truth to power. Throughout history, protests have been the driving force behind some of the most powerful social movements, exposing injustice and abuse, demanding accountability and inspiring people to keep hoping for a better future. The right to protest encompasses various rights and freedoms, including the freedom of assembly, the freedom of association, and the freedom of expression. Unfortunately, these precious rights are under attack and must be protected from those who are afraid of change and want to keep us divided.

During the course of the exhibition, several major news items have affirmed the importance of protest and standing up against injustice.

On May 8, Photojournalist Stephanie Keith was arrested while documenting a candlelight vigil in New York City for Jordan Neely, a homeless man who was choked to death on the subway. On July 7, Keith joined Gallery photographer Ryan Vizzions, who met while documenting the Standing Rock protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline, discussed their experiences documenting protest movements, recent efforts to suppress protest, and the increase in the misuse of force by police at protests.

Watch the Gallery conversation on YouTube here.

Last spring, Tennessee Republicans inadvertently turned the "Tennessee Three" — Democratic Representatives Justin J. Pearson, Gloria Johnson, and Justin Jones — into beloved national political figures by voting to expel them for supporting gun reform demands. At the end of August, Lawmakers voted 70-20 to discipline Jones, effectively preventing him from speaking during the special session. Republicans ordered state troopers to clear the galleries. The decision forced the removal not only of the protesters but also of the parents of students who had survived a deadly school shooting and were keeping a quiet and emotional watch over the proceedings. Rep. Jason Powell, D-Nashville, said "We have arrived in a very scary and sad place in the state of Tennessee. Instead of being used to enforce the public safety, they are being used to suppress democracy."

In July, New York City agreed to pay $13 million to settle a civil rights lawsuit brought on behalf of roughly 1,300 people who were arrested or beaten by police during racial injustice demonstrations that swept through the city during the summer of 2020. In August, Denver approved a $4.7 million settlement for more than 300 protesters who were detained for violating an emergency curfew during demonstrations over the killing of George Floyd in 2020, and later accused the police of using excessive force.

In August, the office of The Marion County Record in Iowa, and home of the newspaper's owner, were raided by Police in an unprecedented attack on the press. Following an international backlash, the County attorney cited 'insufficient evidence' for the search and seizure.

"When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have to speak up. You have to say something; you have to do something. You must be bold, brave, and courageous and find a way…to get in the way". – John Lewis

View the exhibition here.

Santa Fe's Monroe Gallery presents 'Good Trouble' taking a look at the impact of activists

 Via The Albuquerque Journal

Kathaleen Roberts

August 6, 2023

Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection

A Pioneer Organizer Of The Office Workers' Union, Wall Street and Broad Street, NYC, 1936

Many of America’s most cherished rights materialized because someone took action.

“Good Trouble,” an exhibition of more than 50 photographs documents the power of the individual to inspire movements at Santa Fe’s Monroe Gallery of Photography.

Photographs can propel passion and inspire change, from the images of a spinning Gandhi to the Standing Rock protests.

The photographs document Civil Rights leaders as well as other lesser-known and everyday people who champion freedom across the globe, from labor to social to environmental issues.

“It’s showing the courage and the necessity for the everyday person to stand up for what’s right,” said Sidney Monroe, gallery co-owner.

The images extend from the 1930s to the present.

Life magazine photographer Carl Mydans captured an office workers’ union protest in 1936. An unidentified woman leads the group cradling an American flag. Mydans was known for his World War II photographs.

“Obviously, she is a young leader of a union,” Monroe said. “For a woman at that time, that’s pretty remarkable.”

The photographer Bill Eppridge, best known for his photographs of the late Sen. Robert Kennedy, took a portrait of the labor leader César Chávez working in a field in 1974.

Chávez was an American labor leader and Civil Rights activist. He co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers labor union. Ideologically, his world-view combined leftist politics with Catholic social teachings.

“It’s presented as an everyman, a worker, which of course, he was,” Monroe said.

The collection also encompasses contemporary risk-takers, such as Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg, pictured sitting alone, dwarfed by the shadow of the Swedish Parliament building. Her sign reads “School Strike for Climate.” She was 15 years old.

“It’s become a worldwide movement,” Monroe said. “Apparently, they had some lessons in school, and she said if these parents and adults aren’t going to do anything, I’ll sit outside Parliament.”

Ryan Vizzions’ photograph of the Tennessee Three documents the three state representatives who were expelled from the legislature for protesting Republican inaction on gun violence. The shot captures a press conference after they were reinstated.

Gandhi, perhaps more than any other person, embodies the exhibition’s theme of a long-term commitment to a cause. His spinning in the face of provocations during India’s anti-colonial movement was symbolic of self-sufficiency. He spun daily for one hour beginning at 4 a.m. Famed photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White shot the portrait shortly before Gandhi was assassinated.

“Gandhi was very particular about having an audience with him,” Monroe said. “He insisted she learn how to use a spinning wheel. She wrote Gandhi called her his personal tormentor because she was using this large flash. It was disruptive to his meditation.”

The exhibition will hang through Sept. 17.

'GOOD TROUBLE'

WHERE: Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar Ave., Santa Fe

WHEN: Runs through Sept. 17

INFORMATION: 505-992-0800; monroegallery.com.

What these men behind a historic photo taken 47 years ago say about race in Boston then and now

 Via WCVB Boston

By Brittany Johnson

July 28, 2023

BOSTON —

The two men who were part of a single historic photograph that captured the essence of racial tension in Boston in 1976 are reflecting on how far the city has come and how far it has to go in order to achieve racial justice.

Ted Landsmark and Stanley Forman met up with WCVB's Brittany Johnson at Boston's City Hall Plaza, where the incident took place.

As Landsmark walked across the plaza, he reflected back to the day a group of protestors attacked him. Landsmark was kicked, hit in the face, and suffered a broken nose. One of the protesters swung the American flag in his direction to use it as a weapon.

"Ironically, on the day when the assault took place, I was on my way to a meeting in City Hall to discuss how the city could open up more job opportunities to contractors of color and to workers of color in the city," Landsmark, who was a young lawyer at the time of the attack, told Johnson.

"I had no expectation that I would encounter a crowd of anti-busing demonstrators," he said. "My mind was fixed on creating opportunities and jobs for young people in the city."

During this time period, Boston was fraught with discrimination and uproar over court-ordered school desegregation.

Stanley Forman

The Soiling of Old Glory" Anti-Busing Protest, Boston, 1976

"Boston half a century ago was fraught with all kinds of discrimination," Landsmark explained. "It affected housing. It affected the police department. It affected schools. It affected our transportation system. Redlining had been in place and had made it virtually impossible for African-Americans to be able to live where they wanted to live in the city. The transportation system was one that discriminated in terms of employment. It was a place that was very uncomfortable for people of color, and African Americans in particular, to live and to have opportunities for career growth and opportunities to really take advantage of all of the educational opportunities that exist within the city."

With the racial climate at the forefront, Landsmark said he knew the attack could transcend into a way for him to speak to larger issues of the civil rights movement.

"From the moment I was attacked in City Hall Plaza, I knew that I was going to be placed in a position to have an opportunity to talk about the issues of race and of access to jobs and education that existed within this region. It was clear to me that people of color, and African-Americans in particular, had been discriminated against for generations, and that at that moment, there was an opportunity for me to have a platform to address those issues in the context of bussing as it was taking place in the city," he said.

The Pulitzer Prize photograph, titled "The Soiling of Old Glory," was taken by photojournalist and former NewsCenter 5 videographer Stanley Forman.

"The day I took that picture, I didn't get — I tell everybody, I didn't get the impact of it. I mean, I ran down and continued on the coverage. They left here (City Plaza), and I just followed them," F0rman said.

"When did you realize the magnitude of what you had?" Johnson asked Forman.

"I think when we were in the office, and the editors were looking at it, and I was looking at it, and they were so frightened it would start a race war," Forman replied. "I think that's when I realized how bad it was. It took a few hours for me to catch on."

"What Stanley and I have realized over time is that the photograph provides an incentive, a platform for us to raise issues around race in the city, not only in terms of what happened in the 1970s but more importantly in terms of what is happening now as we look forward with new generations of individuals who are addressing these same issues of racial justice," said Landsmark.

Landsmark, a long-time civil rights activist and now a professor of public policy at Northeastern University, said Boston has come a long way but said work still needs to be done to achieve racial justice.

"There's been a great deal of change in the city, primarily in the public sector. Our city council is elected and is composed primarily of people of color. For the first time, we have a person of color as mayor within the city, and we've made significant advancement in many of our public sector areas, but we have a huge amount of work to do in the private sector. Our financial services area, our high-tech companies, our universities, our biotech firms all need to do considerably more to open up job opportunities for young people of color in and around the city and need to use their private sector resources and capital to develop job training programs and career opportunities for people within the city," said Landsmark.

"In 2023, did you think you'd still be speaking about achieving racial justice?" Johnson asked Landsmark.

"I was perhaps naïve in believing that by 2023 we would be much further along not only in Boston but nationally in terms of achieving racial justice, in terms of achieving opportunities for African-Americans to be able to be professionals and homeowners and to maintain stability within their families. And it's a little disappointing that we're still struggling today with many of the same issues that we faced in 1976 when I was attacked on City Hall Plaza," he said.

Just down from City Hall Plaza, the NAACP convention was getting underway.

It has been over 40 years since the annual convention was held in the Commonwealth, and Landsmark hopes that the return of the national convention to the city will serve as a tide change in Boston's history.

"Boston is definitely ready to take advantage of this moment, in part because our elected officials have embraced social change, in part because the demographics of who is living in the city have changed so significantly, and in part, because we understand that the future of the city is dependent on the success of people of color in the greater Boston area," Landsmark said.

WCVB

Ted Landsmark and Stanley Forman

The message of the 114th National Convention is "Thriving Together," which is something Landsmark and Forman know a thing or two about, as they are forever attached to the story of "The Soil of Old Glory."

"People have asked me whether I thought Stanley should have intervened somehow," Landsmark shared, as he was standing beside Forman. "And I think that in doing his job of taking the photo at that moment, he contributed to the kind of dialog that we need to have not only in Boston but around the country, around the implications of hate and racial violence and what it is we need to think about doing to eliminate both."

"And that moment was captured in a famous photograph where a young person was trying to kill me with the American flag.”

 Via WBUR

July 23, 2023

Civil rights activist Ted Landsmark reflects on Boston's reputation for racism — and how the city has and hasn't changed.

“I was on my way to an affirmative action meeting with city officials to try to open more jobs for people of color and minority contractors in the city of Boston,” Landsmark says. “I was attacked by a group of anti-busing demonstrators. And that moment was captured in a famous photograph where a young person was trying to kill me with the American flag.”

Stanley Forman: "The Soiling of Old Glory" Anti-Busing Protest, Boston, 1976

Listen here:

Photojournalist Stanley Forman On CBS Sunday Morning with Jane Pauley scheduled for this Sunday Father’s Day.

 Photojournalist Stanley Forman will appear on CBS Sunday Morning with Jane Pauley scheduled for this Sunday,  Father’s Day, June 18. Watch here.

Stanley Forman: The Soiling of Old Glory" Anti-Busing Protest, Boston, 1976

 FLAG DAY – Faith Salie talks with the Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Stanley Forman and Ted Landsmark about Forman’s indelible 1976 photo of a white teenager assaulting Landsmark, a Black man, with an American flag and flagpole during civil rights unrest in Boston.

Stanley Forman with Ted Landsmark

Related: Nearly 50 years later, famous photo is a ‘teaching tool,’ not just an ‘artifact of America’s past’

Photographer Stanley Forman and victim Ted Landsmark, a distinguished professor at Northeastern, reflect on the 1977 Pulitzer Prize winning photograph, “The Soiling of Old Glory.” Even today, Landsmark says, it can be used to spark discussion about race.

Miami University Art Museum exhibit: “A Lens For Freedom: Civil Rights Photographs by Steve Schapiro”

 Via Dayton Daily News

Augst 26, 2022

Steve Schapiro: "We Shall Overcome" Summer of '64 Freedom Bus, Oxford, Ohio, 1964

OXFORD — “A Lens For Freedom: Civil Rights Photographs by Steve Schapiro” will be one of the three featured exhibitions on display this fall at Miami University Art Museum and Sculpture Park. The exhibitions will be on view through early December.

“‘A Lens For Freedom’ consists of 17 photos and three photo murals that are based on photographs of contact sheets that all pertain to civil rights photographs by Steve Schapiro with particular focus on developments leading up to and involving Freedom Summer,” said Jason Shaiman, curator of exhibitions at Miami University Art Museum.

Schapiro was there in the 1960s with his camera to capture some of the most iconic moments of the civil rights movement. Schapiro was also one of the leading photographers to document the historic 1964 Freedom Summer Campaign. His photographs are on view in the McKie Gallery.

“At the Art Museum, we have been very involved in exhibitions and programs for a number of years that support civil rights and social justice, and we’ve done other exhibitions pertaining to Freedom Summer,” Shaiman said.

This foundation for this exhibition really came about in 2019, when we worked with Steve Schapiro and his now widow, because unfortunately, Steve passed away in January of this year, of providing a partial gift as well as a museum purchase of 20 photographs. So, that’s where the 17 photos are from. We took the three contact sheets, and we’ve blown them up as photo murals, he said.

“This was a wonderful collaboration with Steve, because, as you might know, the grounds where the Art Museum stands is part of what used to be the Western College for Women. Now, it’s considered the Western Campus for Miami University. In 1964, the Western College for Women hosted the two-week training for volunteers, who were going into the Deep South, particularly Mississippi, to support Black voter registration, and the setting up of Freedom Schools and Freedom Libraries,” Shaiman said.

Freedom Summer was hosted by Western College for Women.

“The photos that we have piece together how Steve Schapiro got involved in photographing the civil rights movement. Then, with a particular focus on Freedom Summer, some of the photos were taken in Oxford during the first week of training. Steve was only present for the first week of training,” he said.

The rest of the photos in the exhibition record what he was seeing and documenting in Mississippi, around the region of Neshoba County, which is where a lot of the trouble in Mississippi took place, Shaiman said.

“Steve had a diverse career. He really made a name for himself within civil rights photography. He took some of the most amazing photos of Dr. King, of people like John Lewis, Medgar Evers, Rosa Parks, and so many major figures in the civil rights movement, especially in the 1960′s. His involvement really started with James Baldwin, who was a very well noted writer, poet, speaker on the Black experience,” he said.

Baldwin introduced Schapiro to a lot of major civil rights figures, and that transformed his trajectory as a photojournalist, which continued through the 1960′s. In the 1970′s, he started working in Hollywood, and he was doing still photos on and off-set for a lot of major movies like “The Godfather,” “Taxi Driver,” and a number of big-name films and he became very well known and respected for that work, which kept him busy for several decades.

“Schapiro has said in interviews, that as wonderful as those opportunities were, he still felt like his civil rights photos were his most important contributions to photography,” Shaiman said.

He said Schapiro was able to capture the individual personalities of the people that he recorded in his photos.

“He had a unique approach,” Shaiman said, “There was nothing that felt staged about his photos.”

“He was really capturing who these people were, and what they were fighting for, and I think his approach moved beyond photojournalism, and it really captured a sense of humanity of the people that he was photographing,” said Shaiman.

The exhibition and related programming are supported with a grant from FotoFocus as part of the FotoFocus Biennial 2022. The Art Museum also received support from Richard and Susan Momeyer. The exhibition is dedicated to the memory of Schapiro, who passed away on Jan. 15.

How to go

What: “A Lens For Freedom: Civil Rights Photographs by Steve Schapiro”

When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, noon to 5 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. the second Wednesday of each month. The exhibition will be on display through Dec. 10. Closed on Sundays, Mondays and university holidays.

Where: Miami University Art Museum and Sculpture Park, 801 S. Patterson Ave., Oxford

Admission: Free and open to the public. Visitor parking passes are available at the museum.

More info: (513) 529-2232 or www.MiamiOH.edu/ArtMuseum. It is optional for visitors to wear a mask.

"This is just two people protected under the Constitution, and it is seen as suddenly offensive. That's a huge problem."

 

This photo, shot by freelance photographer Grant Baldwin, was taken down from the Gaston County Museum at the direction of the county manager. 

(Photo: courtesy of Grant Baldwin Photography)

Via Gaston Gazette

June 15, 2022

Photo removed from Gaston County Museum to be displayed in Santa Fe gallery

Kara Fohner

The Gaston Gazette

A gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, will display the photograph that the Gaston County manager ordered removed from a museum exhibit.

The photograph, which features two men kissing after one of them proposed at a Charlotte Pride parade in 2019, will be featured in an exhibit titled "Imagine a World Without Photojournalism" at the Monroe Gallery of Photography. The exhibit runs from July 1 to Sept. 29.

Grant Baldwin, the photographer who shot the image, said that he received an email from the gallery owners, Sidney and Michelle Monroe, asking to use the photograph in the exhibit with plans to include an explanation about how it was removed from the photography exhibition at the Gaston County Museum of Art and History.

The photograph was removed from the Gaston County Museum at the order of County Manager Kim Eagle. The county said in a written statement that Eagle reviewed the photograph and told museum staff to work with the photographer to find an alternative photograph to display "that would be more considerate of differing viewpoints in the community." 

The county said that it finds it important that the items the museum shares be "informational without championing political views," according to a statement released by the county Tuesday.

Baldwin, who has been a freelance photojournalist for 11 years, has mixed feelings about the situation. He is sensitive to the impact that the news of the photo's removal may have had on LGBTQ+ individuals in Gaston County, but he is also excited that the photograph seems to have taken on a life of its own. 

"I just feel like, you know, on those occasions when a journalist gets to make something that takes on its own narrative and life, ... that's really great, that excites me. And I feel honored that I got to make a piece of work that's doing that," Baldwin said. "So, as a journalist, I'm excited about what's going on, and I don't mean that in any sort of disrespectful way to the challenges that this poses for the LGBTQ community. I'm not happy with what they're experiencing with this."

Michelle Monroe, one of the co-owners of the Monroe Gallery of Photography, said that she learned the photograph had been removed from the museum exhibit from media reports.

"I'm using the photo for several reasons, but it is also a wonderful photograph. We are a gallery, and you know, we don't just want a photograph with substance. We want a photograph that is well done and beautiful, and tells an important story," she said. "We actually have had other work that would represent the human civil rights of the LGBTQ and decided that we would switch out one of those for this, because this was so current and apparently so threatening that we wanted to champion it."

She said that in terms of the arc of history, some moments are signals, catalysts that ultimately have historical significance.

She said the removal of the photograph from the exhibit is a clear signal that history is moving in the wrong direction.

"This piece of art is simply a photograph, right?" she said. "This is just two people protected under the Constitution, and it is seen as suddenly offensive. That's a huge problem." 

Related Coverage

"It is our understanding that the photograph has already been sent to a gallery in Santa Fe, where the gallery owner, Michelle Monroe of Monroe Gallery of Photography, recognizes that it is a substantial photograph that tells an important story about human civil rights."  -Opinion, Gaston Gazette

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Muhammad, Malcolm, and Miami: A Conversation with Bob Gomel and Peniel Joseph

 Via The Briscoe Center for American History

Muhammad, Malcolm, and Miami:

A Conversation with Bob Gomel and Peniel Joseph

Feb. 15, 2022  •  5:00 p.m. CST • Recording available here

About the program:

Please join the Briscoe Center and LBJ Presidential Library on Feb. 15, 2022, for Muhammad, Malcolm, and Miami: A Conversation with Bob Gomel and Peniel Joseph. The online event is presented in conjunction with the Briscoe Center’s exhibit “One Night in Miami”: From Photo to Film, currently on display at the LBJ Presidential Library.

 After his victory over Sonny Liston for the heavyweight championship on Feb. 25, 1964, Muhammad Ali celebrated at the Hampton House, a motel and diner in Miami that served as a gathering place for Black entertainers and celebrities. The evening inspired Kemp Powers’s 2013 play, “One Night in Miami,” which was adapted into Regina King’s Academy Award-nominated 2020 movie.

 Key scenes in the movie were inspired by iconic photos taken by Bob Gomel and Flip Schulke, famed photojournalists whose archives are housed at the Briscoe Center. These photos—Gomel’s photographs of Malcolm X and Ali in the Hampton House diner, and Schulke’s underwater photos of Ali—will be the focus of the event.

Bob Gomel will talk about his relationship with Ali over multiple photo sessions, including the “Life” magazine assignment that resulted in the iconic images of Ali and Malcolm X at the Hampton House. Distinguished historian Peniel Joseph will discuss the event’s historical context and share his thoughts on the relationship between Malcolm and Ali. The discussion will be joined by Mark Updegrove, president and CEO of the LBJ Foundation, and Don Carleton, executive director of the Briscoe Center.

 The online event is free. Visit https://muhammadmalcolmandmiami.eventbrite.com to register, and you will receive an email the day before the event with the link.

 

The exhibit, “One Night in Miami”: From Photo to Film, showcases photos from the Briscoe Center’s collections that inspired key moments in the 2020 film. The photos by Gomel and Schulke, many of which have never before been exhibited, depict a young Muhammed Ali (then known by his birth name, Cassius Clay) during the early years of his boxing career. Located in the LBJ Library’s Great Hall, the exhibit is open through May 8, 2022. 

REGISTER HERE

About Bob Gomel:

A native New Yorker, Bob Gomel produced numerous noteworthy images for “Life,” including assignments documenting Marilyn Monroe, the Beatles, and this series showing Muhammed Ali with Malcolm X. He later freelanced for “Sports Illustrated,” “Newsweek” and “Fortune” magazines, among others, before transitioning to advertising photography. Gomel has received numerous awards during his career and continues to travel and photograph international subjects. His archive at the Briscoe Center ranges in date from 1959 to 2014, and includes film negatives, contact sheets, and exhibit prints. He currently resides in Houston, Texas, with his wife Sandra.

Remembering Steve Schapiro

Steve Schapiro at one of his many exhibitions held at Monroe Gallery of Photography, Santa Fe, NM

Photo by ©R. David Marks

Steve Schapiro died peacefully on January 15 surrounded by his wife, Maura Smith, and son, Theophilus Donoghue in Chicago, Illinois after battling pancreatic cancer. He was 87. 

The New York Times: Steve Schapiro, Photojournalist Who Bore Witness, Dies at 87

“You didn’t get the sense from his photographs that Steve was even in the room,” Sidney Monroe, co-owner of a photojournalism gallery in Santa Fe, N.M., that exhibited Mr. Schapiro’s work, said in an interview.

CNN: 'His images moved minds': The legacy of Steve Schapiro

BLIND Magazine: Steve Schapiro, Chronicler of 20th Century America, Dies At 87

The Times UK: Steve Schapiro obituary - Acclaimed photographer whose subjects ranged from Martin Luther King to Barbra Streisand

People: Steve Schapiro, Photojournalist Who Shot PEOPLE's First Cover, Dies at 87: 'His Talent Defied Genres'

Chicago Sun Times: Photographer Steve Schapiro, whose photos captured civil rights, arts ‘time capsules,’ dead at 87

Los Angeles Times: Photojournalist Steve Schapiro, who died last week, left images that reach into the soul of history

ArtDaily: Photographer Steve Schapiro has died at age 87

Pro Photo Daily: What We Learned This Week: Steve Shapiro, Acclaimed Photojournalist, Dies at 87

Chicago Tribune:  Chicago photographer Steve Schapiro is dead at 87. He captured the world with his camera, from the civil rights era to De Niro.

Variety: Steve Schapiro, Photojournalist and Film Industry Photographer, Dies at 87

The Guardian UK: Ali to Andy W: Steve Schapiro’s life in photography – in pictures

Washington Post: Steve Schapiro, Prize Winning Photographer, Dies at 87

ABC News: A prize-winning photographer whose indelible images ranged from civil rights marches to the set of “The Godfather” and other films, Steve Schapiro has died at age 87

US News: Steve Schapiro, Prize-Winning Photographer, Dies at 87

Hollywood Reporter: Steve Schapiro, Acclaimed Photojournalist, Dies at 87

PHOTOGRAPHER STEVE SCHAPIRO DIES AT 87

 

Steve Schapiro in Monroe Gallery, Santa Fe

Photograph by ©R. David Marks

January 16, 2022

Prolific photographer Steve Schapiro covered major historical events and captured seminal moments of the American Civil Rights Movement

Santa Fe, NM--Steve Schapiro died peacefully on January 15 surrounded by his wife, Maura Smith, and son, Theophilus Donoghue in Chicago, Illinois after battling pancreatic cancer. He was 87.

Steve Schapiro discovered photography at the age of nine at summer camp. Excited by the camera’s potential, Schapiro spent the next decades prowling the streets of his native New York City trying to emulate the work of French photographer Henri Cartier Bresson, whom he greatly admired. His first formal education in photography came when he studied under the photojournalist W. Eugene Smith. Smith’s influence on Schapiro was far-reaching. He taught him the technical skills he needed to succeed as a photographer but also informed his personal outlook and worldview. Schapiro’s lifelong interest in social documentary and his consistently empathetic portrayal of his subjects is an outgrowth of his days spent with Smith and the development of a concerned humanistic approach to photography.

Beginning in 1961, Schapiro worked as a freelance photojournalist. His photographs appeared internationally in the pages and on the covers of magazines, including Life, Look, Time, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Sports Illustrated, People and Paris Match. During the decade of the 1960s in America, called the “golden age in photojournalism,” Schapiro produced photo-essays on subjects as varied as narcotics addition, Easter in Harlem, the Apollo Theater, Haight-Ashbury, political protest, the presidential campaign of Robert Kennedy, poodles and presidents. A particularly poignant story about the lives of migrant workers in Arkansas, produced in 1961 for Jubilee and picked up by the New York Times Magazine, both informed readers about the migrant workers’ difficult living conditions and brought about tangible change—the installation of electricity in their camps.

©Steve Schapiro: Migrant Bean Pickers, Arkansas, 1961

An activist as well as documentarian, Schapiro covered many stories related to the Civil Rights movement, including the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the push for voter registration and the Selma to Montgomery march. Called by Life to Memphis after Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, Schapiro produced some of the most iconic images of that tragic event.

©Steve Schapiro

Martin Luther King Marching for Voting Rights with John Lewis, Reverend Jesse Douglas, James Forman and Ralph Abernathy, Selma, 1965

In the 1970s, as picture magazines like Look folded, Schapiro shifted attention to film. With major motion picture companies as his clients, Schapiro produced advertising materials, publicity stills, and posters for films as varied as The Godfather, The Way We Were, Taxi Driver, Midnight Cowboy, Rambo, Risky Business, and Billy Madison. He also collaborated on projects with musicians, such as Barbra Streisand and David Bowie, for record covers and related art.

Schapiro’s photographs have been widely reproduced in magazines and books related to American cultural history from the 1960s forward, civil rights, and motion picture film. Monographs of Schapiro’s work include American Edge (2000); a book about the spirit of the turbulent decade of the 1960s in America, and Schapiro’s Heroes (2007), which offers long intimate profiles of ten iconic figures: Muhammad Ali, Andy Warhol, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, Ray Charles, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, James Baldwin, Samuel Beckett, Barbra Streisand and Truman Capote. Schapiro’s Heroes was the winner of an Art Directors Club Cube Award. Taschen released The Godfather Family Album: Photographs by Steve Schapiro in 2008, followed by Taxi Driver (2010), both initially in signed limited editions. This was followed by Then And Now (2012), Bliss about the changing hippie generation (2015), BOWIE (2016),

Misericordia (2016) an amazing facility for people with developmental problems, and in 2017 books about Muhammad Ali and Taschen’s Lucie award-winning The Fire Next Time with James Baldwin’s text and Schapiro’s Civil Rights photos from 1963 to 1968. At the time of his death, Schapiro was working on a book of his photographs of Andy Warhol (Taschen) and a book pairing his photographs alongside his son Theophilus’s photography.

Since the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s seminal 1969 exhibition, Harlem on my Mind, which included a number of his images, Schapiro’s photographs have appeared in museum and gallery exhibitions world-wide. The High Museum of Art’s Road to Freedom, which traveled widely in the United States, includes numerous of his photographs from the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King Jr. Recent one-man shows have been mounted in Los Angeles, London, Santa Fe, Amsterdam, Paris. And Berlin. Steve has had large museum retrospective exhibitions in the United States, Spain, Russia, and Germany.

Schapiro continued to work in a documentary vein. His recent series of photographs have been about India, music festivals, the Christian social activist Shane Claiborne, and Black Lives Matter.

In 2017, Schapiro won the Lucie Award for Achievement in Photojournalism. Schapiro’s work is represented in many private and public collections, including the Smithsonian Museum, the High Museum of Art, the New York Metropolitan Museum, and the Getty Museum.

Steve is survived by his wife Maura Smith, his sons Theophilus Donoghue and Adam Schapiro, and his daughters Elle Harvey and Taylor Schapiro. 

Rest in power.

Stanley Forman, photographer behind iconic Pulitzer-winning images hangs up his lens

 Via The Forward

January 12, 2022

‘The Soiling of Old Glory’ won the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for Spot Photography. In it teen Joseph Rakes (L) uses an American flag to attack civil rights lawyer and activist Ted Landsmark (R) during protests over the Boston busing crisis, Apr. 5, 1976.

©Stanley Forman

Gallery photographer Stanley Forman has retired after 55 years cruising the streets of Boston in search of breaking news.

"If there’s a definitive Pulitzer Prize-winning photo, it’s “The Soiling of Old Glory” — Stanley Forman’s spot news winner for the Boston Herald American in 1976. In it, a youth turns an American flag into a weapon to use against a Black man at a school busing protest.

Then again, make that two definitive photos: The year before, Forman also won the Pulitzer for spot news with a harrowing image of a woman and her goddaughter falling out of the sky in his photo, “Fire Escape Collapse.”

Forman, 76, who began in newspapers in 1966 and switched to TV news videography two decades later, spent 55 years cruising the streets of Boston in search of breaking news, much of that time in a gas-guzzling Mercury Monarch. He retired on Dec. 31.

Or so he says.

“I have a great home life,” he said by phone from his home in Boston’s northern suburbs on the first weekend of the rest of his life. His primary plan is providing daycare for his four-month-old grandson, adding: “And I can do a limited amount of chasing on my own.” 

Read full article here   Jewish photographer who won Pulitzer retires – The Forward

Gallery Photographer Sanjay Suchak: "There's no better example of democracy and photography than the statue removals happening around Virginia"

 

Via VPM Instagam

November 7, 2021

Gallery photographer Sanjay Suchak's "Take 'em Down" series covering the removal of confederate statues in Virginia as the only official photographer allowed to be part of the wrecking crew was featured on Virginia Public Media (VPM). His work was featured in Monroe Gallery's "Present Tense" exhibit earlier this summer.

Sanjay Suchak: Removing Jackson, Richmond, Virginia, July 1, 2020

"There's no better example of democracy and photography than the statue removals happening around Virginia. I've always liked documenting construction - more destruction of things, abandoned buildings, tearing down arenas, places filled with such life that you tear down piece by piece. So the idea of dismantling these statues, which are celebrated at some point, for all the wrong reasons is very attractive to me as a photographer.”

- Sanjay Suchak

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