Showing posts with label Civil Rights photographs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Civil Rights photographs. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Monroe Gallery at The 2016 AIPAD Photography Show April 13 - 17


Lone Factory Worker, China, 2005
Stephen Wilkes: Lone Worker, China, 2005


Monroe Gallery of Photography is very pleased to be again exhibiting at the AIPAD Photography Show, this year April 13 – 17 in New York at the Park Avenue Amory, 643 Park Avenue. The gallery will be in booth # 104.

Celebrating its 36th year in 2016, The Photography Show features more than 80 of the world’s leading photography art galleries.

Monroe Gall ill be exhibiting specially selected photographs from the gallery's renowned collection of 20th and 21st Century master photojournalists. Among the highlights selected for this year's exhibition are: vintage prints from Spider Martin alongside other important civil rights photographs; a rare selection of never-before-seen vintage prints of photographs taken by Bill Eppridge on the night Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated;  a rare vintage print made from the original negative of the iconic image from World War II by George Silk "An Australian soldier, Private George "Dick" Whittington, is aided by Papuan orderly Raphael Oimbari, near Buna on 25 December 1942";  several large-scale color photographs from Stephen Wilkes’  acclaimed China and Day To Night collections, and an exciting previously unseen large scale photograph of David Bowie taken in New Mexico in 1975 during the filming of “The Man Who Fell To Earth” that is featured in the forthcoming book “Bowie: Photographs by Steve Schapiro” which will be published in April, 2016 by PowerHouse Books, and many other exciting new additions to the gallery’s collection.

Steve Schapiro: David Bowie,  New Mexico, 1975
(“The Man Who Fell To Earth’)

We hope to see you!

Thursday, April 2, 2015

Photojournalist Whitney Curtis awarded First Place in 2014 Domestic News by NPPA



The National Press Photographers Association's Best Of Photojournalism 2015 awards were announced on Tuesday, March 31.


© Whitney Curtis
Rashaad Davis, 23, backs away slowly as St. Louis County police officers approach him with guns drawn and eventually arrest him on Monday, Aug. 11, 2014, at the corner of Canfield Drive and West Flroissant Avenue in Ferguson, Mo. Members of the community took to the streets to protest the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson.





In Domestic News,  first place was awarded to Whitney Curtis of The New York Times. Whitney Curtis is now represented by Monroe Gallery of Photography, and several of her momentous images from Ferguson, Missouri will be exhibited during the AIPAD Photography Show April 16 - 19 (Booth #119, Monroe Gallery of Photography). The Gallery will be exhibiting a specially curated collection of Civil Rights photographs from the 1965 Selma march to the present day.

Curtis' photographs will also be featured in the exhibition "Civil Rights from Sema to Ferguson" at Monroe Gallery of Photography July 3 - September 20, 2015.

About Whitney Curtis

Photos that raise awareness, reveal truth, and ask us to pause. Reflect. Photojournalism is how Whitney Curtis tells stories we might have never known otherwise.

As an editorial, corporate, and commercial photographer, Whitney’s goal is simple: show respect to the subject-matter by creating intimate, creative images that illustrate the story.

After graduating with a degree in photojournalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia, Whitney worked as a staff photojournalist at The Kansas City Star, northern Utah’s Standard-Examiner, and the Daily Herald in suburban Chicago. As an editorial photojournalist, Whitney’s work has been honored by The Associated Press, NPPA’s Best of Photojournalism, CPoY, and Women in Photojournalism.


Saturday, January 24, 2015

"inspired by the photographs of the Selma-to-Montgomery march that are everywhere again"




 
 Barry Blitt drew the January 26, 2015 cover, inspired by the photographs of the Selma-to-Montgomery march that are everywhere again. “It struck me that King’s vision was both the empowerment of African-Americans, the insistence on civil rights, but also the reconciliation of people who seemed so hard to reconcile,” he said. “In New York and elsewhere, the tension between the police and the policed is at the center of things. Like Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner, Michael Brown and Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, Martin Luther King was taken way too early. It is hard to believe things would have got as bad as they are if he was still around today.”
 
 
 
 
 
Martin Luther King Marching for Voting Rights with John Lewis, Reverend Jesse Douglas, James Forman and Ralph Abernathy, Selma, 1965
Martin Luther King Marching for Voting Rights with John Lewis, Reverend Jesse Douglas,
James Forman and Ralph Abernathy, Selma, 1965
 



 
 
 
 
 

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Once Upon a Time… Veteran photog Steve Schapiro serves up poignant history





Boy with Flag, Selma March, 1965



Via The Santa Fe Reporter
July 1, 2014
By Enrique Limón


 More than 50 iconic photographs by LIFE veteran Steve Schapiro go on display this Saturday at Monroe Gallery’s Once Upon a Time in America.


Over the last five decades, Schapiro has documented the transcendent and the mundane surrounding some of the country’s greatest battles, accomplishments and cultural milestones—ranging from Robert F.Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign to candid moments depicting Marlon Brando on the set of The Godfather.


 A lifelong practitioner of the craft, Schapiro developed a love for photography at age 9, when he would try to emulate the shots of the father of photojournalism, Henri Cartier-Bresson.


“This is a show about America and different aspects of America,” Schapiro tells SFR from his Chicago home.


 Aspects like 1965’s MLK-led Selma to Montgomery marches.


 “It was really a turning point, in the sense that so many people were mobilized,” Schapiro reminisces, “because, really what a lot of the Civil Rights movement was about was trying to energize people in the South—particularly black people—to vote and to feel that it was safe to vote and that they could vote, despite the fact that the culture of the times was against them.”


Witnessing several interruptions and threats of violence during the marches, Schapiro kept on shooting and at one point captured a youth resting under the shadow of an American flag.


“It’s symbolic of the spirit that kids have regarding their feelings that things were only going to get better, and that nonviolence was the proper course to take."


That particular picture wasn’t selected by magazine editors at the time, but was like many in his oeuvre, one that came to be by chance after he went through his old contact sheets.


 “Sometimes you look at pictures and you don’t know why they’re iconic or why people relate to them,” he says. “It’s a subtle thing, but there are just moments where all of that happens and the image presents a statement that goes in some ways beyond what you’re seeing.”


 Once Upon a Time in America
Opening Reception with Steve Schapiro: 5-7 pm Saturday, July 5
Exhibition continues through September 21, 2014
 Monroe Gallery of Photography
112 Don Gaspar Ave., 992-0800
www.monroegallery.com

Monday, March 18, 2013

Monroe Gallery at The 2013 AIPAD Photography Show



We are very pleased that Monroe Gallery of Photography will once again be exhibiting at the AIPAD Photography Show, one of the most important international photography art events. The AIPAD Photography Show will be presented by The Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD), April 3 - 7, 2013.

Monroe Gallery will be in the same location as last year, Booth # 419, along the left aisle, near the Cafe.
We will be exhibiting specially selected work from the gallery's renowned collection of 20th and 21st Century master photojournalists. Among the highlights selected for this year's exhibition are:
 
Empire State Building, Hurricane Sandy, 2012

- Nina Berman




 
 
Apple Tree illuminated by gas flaring, Susquehanna County, 2011

 
 
 
 
 
  
 "I Am A Man", Sanitation Workers Strike, Memphis, Tennessee, March 28, 1968
- Ernest C. Withers  ©The Withers Family Trust


Throughout the show we are honored that several of our photographers will be present in our booth, including Nina Berman, Bill Eppridge, John Filo, John Loengard, Brian Hamill, Stephen Wilkes, and many others. Rosalind Withers, Board President of the Ernest C. Withers Collection Museum, will be in attendance announcing the appointment of Monroe Gallery of Photography as representative of the Ernest C. Withers Estate.

We look forward to seeing you at the exhibition.

Very truly yours,
 
Sid and Michelle Monroe
 

Show Hours:
Thursday, April 4 from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Friday, April 5 from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Saturday, April 6 from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Sunday, April 7 from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

The Park Avenue Armory 643 Park Avenue (between 66th and 67th Streets)


Tuesday, February 26, 2013

See Civil Rights & Memphis Music through Ernest Withers’ Eyes


Via Tennessee Trip Tales

You’ve seen Ernest C. Withers’ photographs whether or not you know his name. Last October, they showed in Berlin and draped a building façade in Washington, D.C. If you saw Katori Hall’s play, The Mountaintop, his were the images that shook the final scene. Even before his death in 2007, Withers’ work had exhibited internationally and appeared in films (see 2004’s The Manchurian Candidate with Denzel Washington).
But Withers’ daughter, Rosalind, says her father realized the significance of his work much earlier in his career – specifically, in 1955, when his images of Emmett Till – from the boy’s brutally beaten corpse to his murder trial and funeral – were released worldwide and credited with bringing so much attention to the U.S. civil rights movement.

In a self-published “photo story” following the acquittal of Till’s alleged murderers, Withers wrote: “…we are presenting this…not in an attempt to stir up racial animosities or to question the verdict…but in the hope that [it] might serve to help our nation dedicate itself to seeing that such incidents need not occur again.”

And so his career goes, with Withers assuming the charge of telling pivotal chapters of our country’s 20th-century civil rights story in pictures. Today, you can view the most iconic images in The Withers Collection Museum & Gallery, located on the east end of the Beale Street entertainment district in a building that formerly housed Withers’ studio (and that was named for him in 1995).

The intimate space distills Withers’ vast collection into 10 major “projects.” The school desegregation section shows members of the Little Rock Nine exiting their car (in the background, white students crowd the entrance to their school in protest). A section devoted to Medgar Evers grips you in the faces of Evers’ family attending his funeral. In another section, titled “Memphis and The South,” signs say everything – in a poster held by a young, white man (“Segregation or war!”); in a placard worn by a father strolling his infant daughter (“Daddy, I want to be free too!!!!”). There are moments of triumph, too – when the Montgomery Bus Boycott set that city’s first desegregated bus rolling in 1956, Withers and his camera were there.

Even if you’ve seen these images in other contexts, you’ll immediately recall them – once seen, they never leave your consciousness. Viewed in aggregate, they seem to me even more powerful – as does Withers’ ability to capture the most critical moments at such close range. As for Withers’ near-omnipresence along the civil rights timeline, Rosalind explains simply that her father was a “journalist by nature.” She offers more on the intimacy her father achieved with his subjects, referencing several of his images of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. – particularly one of Dr. King lounging on his bed at the Lorraine Motel (King was in Memphis to join James Meredith’s 1966 March Against Fear). “It speaks to his character that he was able to get so close,” Rosalind believes.

It shouldn’t be lost on anyone that the gallery opens and closes on Dr. King – presenting first the images from 1966 of the man in repose; ordering lunch; looking cool marching in sunglasses and a hat. By the end of the exhibit, it’s two years later, and Withers’ lens is trained on Memphis’ sanitation worker strike (source of Withers’ most recognizable image, shown below) and Dr. King’s last march; King’s blood spilled on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel; masses gathered in Memphis and Atlanta following the assassination – and the riots. It’s hard to imagine, under its present-day neon glow, a Beale Street strewn with tanks and evenly-spaced soldiers, propped with their rifles against shattered-and-boarded windows. But Withers’ images show it like it was.


Many of the images displayed at Memphis’ Withers Collection Museum & Gallery are the same ones you’ll see archived by the Library of Congress and incorporated into the permanent collection of Washington, D.C.’s in-progress National Museum of African American History and Culture, a Smithsonian institution. Major purchases by both organizations helped to fund the creation of the Memphis museum and gallery, which opened in May 2011. Image courtesy of and copyrighted by the Withers Family Trust. All rights reserved. No images can be reproduced without permission.
 

Many of the images displayed at Memphis’ Withers Collection Museum & Gallery are the same ones you’ll see archived by the Library of Congress and incorporated into the permanent collection of Washington, D.C.’s in-progress National Museum of African American History and Culture, a Smithsonian institution. Major purchases by both organizations helped to fund the creation of the Memphis museum and gallery, which opened in May 2011. Image courtesy of and copyrighted by the Withers Family Trust. All rights reserved. No images can be reproduced without permission.
 
 
The gallery takes two lighthearted turns, driven by Withers’ chronicling of baseball and music – and ultimately giving what I saw as the clearest insight into the photographer’s personal life: His series on the Negro Baseball League grew from the portraits players and fans would pay him to take at the ballpark. Withers had no studio at the time, so he would develop prints in the bathtub of his home and dry them in the family’s oven. “I still remember that smell in our house,” Rosalind laughs, but those prints helped Withers and wife Dorothy raise eight children. They were also what drew Dorothy into business with her husband. “He would print and my mom would count [the prints] and tell him how much money he would have to bring home,” Rosalind recalls.


The Withers Collection Museum & Gallery is located at 333 Beale Street in a building that housed Withers’ studio (and that was named for him in 1995). The now-vacant studio space still bears this window marking.
 

The Withers Collection Museum & Gallery is located at 333 Beale Street in a building that housed Withers’ studio (and that was named for him in 1995). The now-vacant studio space still bears this window marking.

As for the music, Withers served as Stax Records’ official photographer for two decades. “He loved the blues and B.B. King was one of his best friends,” Rosalind tells me, noting that he also liked listening to Al Green and Isaac Hayes, whose relationship with Withers was so close, the performer called him “Pops.” To caption Withers’ images of Memphis music history through the 1950s and ’60s is to name-drop star after star: Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Elvis Presley, Tina Turner – though I especially enjoyed the juxtaposition of two of Withers’ images of B.B. King: one of a newbie playing in a club on Beale Street circa-1950; the other of a veteran playing in his own club on Beale Street in 1994.


“'I am a man,' and Elvis and B.B. – that’s Memphis,” Rosalind immediately offered when we began discussing which of her father’s images should accompany this piece. Credit: Image courtesy of and copyrighted by the Withers Family Trust. All rights reserved. No images can be reproduced without permission.
“’I am a man,’ and Elvis and B.B. – that’s Memphis,” Rosalind immediately offered when we began discussing which of her father’s images should accompany this piece. Image courtesy of and copyrighted by the Withers Family Trust. All rights reserved. No images can be reproduced without permission.


What’s next for Withers?
Among individual photographers covering the civil rights movement, Withers is commonly credited with producing the largest body of work. Though her father once told her his portfolio was five million images strong, Rosalind has stopped counting (for now, at least) at one million. Of those, only a few thousand have been digitized.

The images sit – some as negatives; others as prints – in a pandemonium of file cabinets, cardboard boxes and card catalog-style units in a space near the gallery. There is some clarity in the chaos courtesy of the Withers’ original subject-matter categorization, but the takeaway is this: The images need to be legitimately archived. Rosalind has a plan for that, but not the money. During our interview, she was preparing for a black tie fundraiser to that end. She also previewed memberships the museum will soon be offering to help offset the costs of archival, and expansion. (An ambitious project will be announced this spring to expand the gallery’s current 7,000 square feet to 28,000 – including an amphitheater for musicians and theater groups and a restaurant.)

Until then, Withers’ images will receive their largest showing since his death (in 2007) during the April 3-7 gathering of the Association of International Photography Art Dealers at New York City’s Park Avenue Armory. (Monroe Gallery of Photography, Booth #419)

You only have to go as far as Beale Street.

While Rosalind and her team work to raise the funds necessary to properly archive her father’s body of work, the images remain in Withers’ original filing system (offsite). “All of this handwriting is my mother’s and father’s,” she smiles.
While Rosalind and her team work to raise the funds necessary to properly archive her father’s body of work, the images remain in Withers’ original filing system (offsite). “All of this handwriting is my mother’s and father’s,” Rosalind reflected.

Before you go:The Withers Collection Museum & Gallery (333 Beale Street) is open Wednesdays and Thursdays, 4-10 p.m.; Fridays and Saturdays, 4-11 p.m. and Sundays, 4-9 p.m. (Daytime tours are available for groups of 10 or more by reservation.)
With a short video on the photographer’s life and more than 90 images on display, plan to spend around an hour.

Currently, admission is a suggested donation of $5-10. Beginning March 1, 2013, admission will be $10 for adults and $7 for children with membership packages at various levels.

Note that some of the gallery images are sensitive in nature (read: prepare your children in advance – and be prepared to answer their questions during and after viewing the exhibit).

Thursday, April 5, 2012

AIPAD: Bill Eppridge and Steve Schapiro Selects


Via PHOTO/arts Magazine

AIPAD 2012 (part 2)


"Susan May Tell is a career fine art photographer and photojournalist, with a very impressive background. She is currently the Fine Arts Chair for ASMP/NY. As one might expect, her magnet draws her towards classic black & white photography, photojournalism and documentary work.

One of the highlights of the afternoon for Susan was meeting, photographing, and being photographed by Bill Eppridge, surely among the greats of modern photojournalism. Eppridge is most well known for his iconic image of the busboy supporting the head of Robert Kennedy as he lay dying from a gunshot wound in 1968. His work was being shown by Monroe Gallery (419). Another image Susan noticed and loved at Monroe Gallery was Steve Schapiro's Freedom Rider Jerome Smith, Mississippi (1965)."


Related: Long Road to Freedom, Steve Schpairo and Jerome Smith

             Santa Fe, Rétrospective Bill Eppridge

            Raw File:  “Hard-Boiled Photog Blends the Old With the New"

Friday, January 20, 2012

WEEK IN REVIEW: Selected Photography Stories



Med_indian_canyons_8367-jpg
Supermarket Pickets, New Jersey, 1963 © Steve Schapiro,
Monroe Gallery of Photography, Santa Fe

La Lettre de la Photographie has a wrap-up of the 2012 edition of Photo LA, reported by Jeff Dunus with a slide show of highlights here.


September 28, 1959, 108th St. East, New York
Vivian Maier: September 28, 1959, 108th St. East, New York
©Maloof Collection, Ltd.


 
Art Critic Roberta Smith of The New York Times writes a review of 2 concurrent Vivian Maier exhibitions in New York. The exhibition "Vivian Maier: Discovered" opens at Monroe Gallery of Photography on February 3, and continues through April 22.



Grey Villet: Mildred and Richard Loving

The International Center of Photography opened the exhibition "The Lovings Story: Photographs by Grey Villet".  The Amsterman News has the most recent article about this remarkable collection of photographs, taken by Life magazine photographer Grey Villet:

"Brown v. Board of Education. Plessy v. Ferguson. The list of notable court cases that blazed the trail for civil rights in our nation is long, but there is one case that many have forgotten but is no less important: Loving v. Virginia."

More about the Lovings photographs here.


Raw File Blog covers Tim Mantoani's  new book Behind Photographs: Archiving Photographic Legends. "The Tank Man of Tienanmen Square. Muhammad Ali standing over Sonny Liston in victory. The portrait of the Afghan Girl on the cover of National Geographic. Many of us can automatically recall these photos in our heads, but far fewer can name the photographers who took them. Even fewer know what those photographers look like." We are very proud that several of Monroe gallery's photographers are featured.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Friday, December 30, 2011

The Case of Loving v. Bigotry


Hands of Mildred and Richard Loving on their kitchen table, King and Queen County, Va
Photograph by Grey Villet

January 1, 2012


In 1958, Richard and Mildred Loving were arrested in a nighttime raid in their bedroom by the sheriff of Caroline County, Va. Their crime: being married to each other. The Lovings — Mildred, who was of African-American and Native American descent, and Richard, a bricklayer with a blond buzz cut — were ordered by a judge to leave Virginia for 25 years. In January, the International Center of Photography is mounting a show of Grey Villet’s photographs of the couple in 1965. That exhibit is complemented by an HBO documentary, ‘‘The Loving Story,’’ directed by Nancy Buirski, which will be shown on HBO on Feb. 14. The film tells of the Lovings’ struggle to return home after living in exile in Washington, where Mildred, gentle in person but persistent on paper, wrote pleading letters to Robert F. Kennedy and the A.C.L.U. Two lawyers took their case to the Supreme Court, which struck down miscegenation laws in more than a dozen states. The Lovings’ belief in the simple rightness of their plea never wavered. Asked by one of his lawyers if he had a message for the Supreme Court, Richard said he did: ‘‘Tell the court I love my wife.’’
Julie Bosman








Special screening in Los Angeles January 10, 2012 with HBO at the Museum of Tolerance.

Additionally, on January 17th, The Loving Story will screen at the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) in Washington, DC.



Grey Villet's photographs are available from Monroe Gallery of Photography. View selected photographs of the Lovings during photo la at Monroe Gallery of Photography, Booth B-500.

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

"Hard-Boiled Photog Blends the Old With the New"

Be sure to check out the just-posted article about photojournalist Bill Eppridge on Raw File.

"Bill Eppridge knows the rules of photography have changed. The ways of the ’60s, when he was a staff photographer at LIFE magazine, are long gone: Staff photo positions are near extinct, everyone with an iPhone now claims to be a photographer and film seems to be a four-letter word of antiquity.

That said, Eppridge, who has shot many of the historic events of the last half-century, believes the power of documentary photography will always live on, no matter how many photos are out there in however many formats.

“The best still images, they just nail you, you remember them,” he says, as is evidenced by his iconic work."

Full post here.

Slide show here.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

AN EVENING WITH BILL EPPRIDGE

Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, is honored to welcome Bill Eppridge, recipient of the 2011 Lucie Award for Achievement in Photojournalism, to Santa Fe for a gallery discussion of his work. The discussion takes place on Friday, November 4, from 5 to 7 PM. Seating is limited and will be on a first-come basis.

Bill Eppridge is one of the most accomplished photojournalists of the Twentieth Century and has captured some of the most significant moments in American history: he has 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. Over the last 50 years, his work has appeared in numerous publications, including National Geographic, Life, and Sports Illustrated; and has been exhibited in museums throughout the world.

Currently on exhibition: many of Eppridge's most important photo essays, including The Beatles arrival in America, Mississippi Burning: The James Cheney Funeral, and The Robert F. Kennedy 1968 presidential campaign and assassination; continues through November 20, 2011.

Gallery hours are 10 to 5 every day, Monday through Sunday. Admission is free. For further information, please call: 505.992.0800; E-mail: info@monroegallery.com

Monday, October 10, 2011

SAVE THE DATE: BILL EPPRIDGE GALLERY TALK

Bill Eppridge



Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, is honored to welcome Bill Eppridge, recipient of the 2011 Lucie Award for Achievement in Photojournalism, to Santa Fe for a gallery discussion of his work. The discussion takes place on Friday, November 4, from 5 to 7 PM. Seating is limited and will be on a first-come basis.

The Lucie Awards is the annual gala ceremony honoring the greatest achievements in photography. The photography community from countries around the globe will pay tribute to Bill Eppridge, who will receive the 2011 Lucie Award for Achievement in Photojournalism at a special ceremony October 24 at Lincoln Center in New York.

Bill Eppridge is one of the most accomplished photojournalists of the Twentieth Century and has captured some of the most significant moments in American history:  he has 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. Over the last 50 years, his work has appeared in numerous publications, including National Geographic, Life, and Sports Illustrated; and has been exhibited in museums throughout the world.

For the first time, this exhibition presents many of Eppridge's most important photo essays together, including: The Beatles, Mississippi Burning: The James Cheney Funeral, and The Robert F. Kennedy 1968 presidential campaign and assassination. The exhibition continues through November 20, 2011.

Friday, October 7, 2011

Santa Fe, Rétrospective Bill Eppridge




White Barn, New Preston, CT, 2007
White Barn, New Preston, CT, March 9, 2007 © Bill Eppridge

Via la Lettre de la Photographie

Bill Eppridge is one of the most accomplished photojournalists of the Twentieth Century and has captured some of the most significant moments in American history: he has 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.

Born in Buenos Aires, the second of three children, young Bill Eppridge came to the U.S. and grew up in upstate New York near Rochester. In 1960, Eppridge refined his art and his eye at the University of Missouri, where he received his bachelor’s degree in journalism. While at the School of Journalism, Eppridge won a picture competition and first prize brought him to a week-long internship with LIFE magazine.
After his graduation, Eppridge worked for National Geographic, and then, LIFE magazine. With well over 100 assignments, he had already proved his talent by the time he was formally made a member of the exalted Life staff in 1964. His assignments with LIFE magazine marked some very important points in history, beginning with coverage of several wars in the early sixties.

Still later, Eppridge worked on environmental and outdoor stories for LIFE magazine until it ceased publication as a weekly in 1972. He then signed a corporate contract with Time Inc. “I tried all the magazines to see if I liked working for TIME or Fortune. I was there for the start of People.” Eventually in 1977, he joined Sports Illustrated. He describes his work with SI as “Sports with no balls” as he was not fond of shooting baseball, basketball, or football. “I prefer to do something that I’ve never done before”, he remarks. “Rather than specialize, I’m a generalist.”

For the first time, this exhibition presents many of Eppridge’s most important photo essays together, including:

The Beatles:
Bill Eppridge really didn’t know who the Beatles were, but “One morning my boss said, ‘Look, we’ve got a bunch of British musicians coming into town. They’re called the Beatles.’” Eppridge was at John F. Kennedy airport on February 7, 1964 awaiting the arrival of The Beatles. He continued to photograph The Beatles that day, and over the next several days. He was invited to come up to their room at the Plaza Hotel and “stick with them.” He was with them in Central Park and at the Ed Sullivan Show for both the rehearsal and the historic performance. He rode the train to Washington, D.C. with them for the concert at the Washington Coliseum, and photographed their Carnegie Hall performance on February 12, 1964
.
“These were four very fine young gentlemen, and great fun to be around,” Eppridge recalls. After he introduced himself to Ringo, who consulted with John, the group asked what he wanted them to do while being photographed for Life. “I’m not going to ask you to do a thing,” was Eppridge’s reply. “I just want to be there.” An exhibit of Eppridge’s Beatles photographs has been touring since 2001, and was seen by over 2 million people at the Smithsonian Museum.

Mississippi Burning: The James Cheney Funeral:
In late June of 1964, three civil rights workers in Mississippi went missing, kidnapped by Klu Klux Klansmen. One man was black, the other two were white. Their names were James Cheney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. Bill Eppridge 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. There are no pictures of the crime, just the brutal aftermath and the devastating grief and sorrow brought upon a family.

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.


A sign in rear window of car in Philadelphia, Mississippi:
A sign in rear window of car in Philadelphia, Mississippi, 1964
©Bill Eppridge:




Robert F. Kennedy:
One of Eppridge’s most memorable and poignant essays was his coverage of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, first in 1966, and then again on the road with RFK during the 1968 presidential campaign. On June 5, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, he was instructed by his boss to “stay as close as you can to Bobby”. Kennedy assured Eppridge that he would be part of his immediate group, which meant that wherever the Democratic candidate went, Eppridge wouldn’t be far behind. His photograph of the wounded Senator on the floor of the Ambassador Hotel kitchen seconds after he was shot has been described as a modern Pieta. Among the thoughts Eppridge had at that moment was a very loud and clear one: “You are not just a photojournalist, you’re a historian.”


Bill Eppridge
Until November 20, 2011
Monroe Gallery of Photography
112 Don Gaspar
Santa Fe, NM 87501
505.992.0800
Gallery hours are 10 to 5 every day, Monday through Sunday

Bill Eppridge will conduct an exhibition walk-through and gallery talk on Friday, November 4, from 5  to 7 PM.

Links

http://www.monroegallery.com/

Thursday, August 25, 2011

2011 Lucie Awards: Bill Eppridge is Honoree for Achivement in Photojournalism

9th Annual Lucie Awards


The Lucie Awards is the annual gala ceremony honoring the greatest achievements in photography. The photography community from countries around the globe will pay tribute to the most outstanding photography achievements presented at the Gala Awards ceremony. Each year, the Advisory Board nominates deserving individuals across a variety of categories who will be honored during the Lucie Awards ceremony. Once the nominations have been received, the votes are tallied and an honoree in each category is identified.

The 2011 Honoree for Achievement in Photojournalism is Bill Eppridge.

Bill Eppridge already owned a Kodak Brownie Star Flash 620 camera when one day an itinerant photographer with a pony stopped by his house in Richmond, Virginia and asked to photograph Bill and his younger sister. Eppridge was only eight but it was then that he decided he wanted to be a photographer - he could have a big camera, travel, meet lots of interesting people, and have his own pony. That was just the hint of a lifelong career in photojournalism covering some of the most important people and events in history.

Born in Buenos Aires in 1938, Eppridge spent his early childhood in Virginia, and Tennessee. The family moved to Delaware when he was 14. A self-taught photographer, he began shooting for his school newspaper and yearbook, and then sports for the Wilmington Star newspaper. Eppridge was only fifteen, but this early exposure to a real newsroom gave him a taste for journalism.

Eppridge grew up during World War II looking at Life magazine. He was entranced by the work of their war photographers, and later influenced by Gordon Parks and Leonard McCombe. Their pictures looked effortless, as if they just happened in front of the camera and the photographers grabbed them. It was that style of photography that fascinated him –an entire story was told with one significant image.

In 1960 Eppridge graduated from the University of Missouri, Journalism program headed by Clif Edom who had begun the famous Missouri Photojournalism Workshop with Roy Stryker of the Farm Security Administration. While still a student, Eppridge was accepted into that workshop twice during his college years. He got a career boost when his photograph of a white horse against a tornadic sky won first prize for pictorial in the NPPA Pictures of the Year competition in 1959. He was twice named NPPA College Photographer of the Year and awarded internships at Life magazine.


Eppridge’s first professional assignment after graduation was a nine-month documentary trip around the world for National Geographic magazine. After that, he began shooting for Life. During the year 1964 while on a contract basis with the magazine, Eppridge was there when the Beatles first stepped off the plane in the United States, and chronicled their effect on this country. He spent several days photographing a young Barbra Streisand on the verge of stardom, covered Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan who was to sing at his first Newport Folk Festival, and immediately afterward he was sent to Mississippi where the bodies of slain civil rights workers Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner had been found buried in an earthen dam. Eppridge stayed for several days and photographed the solemn funeral of James Chaney. He soon earned a place on the masthead of Life.

As a Life staff photographer for most of the 1960s, until that magazine folded in 1972, Eppridge worked alongside many of the legends he had admired while growing up – Alfred Eisenstadt, Gordon Parks, Carl Mydans, Ralph Morse, and Larry Burrows.

Eppridge’s unique style of photojournalism brought him history-making assignments - he covered Latin American revolutions, the Vietnam war, and Woodstock. Eppridge was the only photographer admitted into Marilyn Lovell’s home as her husband, Jim, orbited the moon in the crippled Apollo 13 spacecraft. His landmark photographic essay on drug use, “Needle Park- Heroin Addiction” won the National Headliner’s Award. He was given unprecedented access to the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution in Leningrad and photographed the entire Baltic fleet as it was assembled in the Neva River, something that no westerner had ever seen.

One of Eppridge’s most memorable and poignant essays was his coverage of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, first in 1966, and then again on the road with RFK during the 1968 presidential campaign. His photograph of the wounded Senator on the floor of the Ambassador Hotel kitchen seconds after he was shot has been described as a modern Pieta.

After Life ceased publication in 1972, Eppridge joined Sports Illustrated where he continued to use his photojournalist talent to cover both Winter and Summer Olympics; America’s Cup sailing; the environmental disasters of the Mount St. Helen’s volcanic eruption, and the devastating Exxon Valdez oil spill and aftermath. His sporting essays and wildlife photography took him around the world to the Arctic, Africa, Asia, and the Alps.

Eppridge has received some of the highest honors his profession bestows – the NPPA Joseph A. Sprague Award, and The Missouri School of Journalism Medal of Honor. He has been a respected force in training a new generation of photojournalists for more than twenty years at both the Missouri Photojournalism Workshop, and the Eddie Adams Photography Workshop. His photographs have been exhibited at the Smithsonian Museum of American History; The High Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Visa Pour L’Image, and in galleries and museums around the world.

Eppridge currently lives in Western Connecticut with his wife Adrienne and his cat "Bear". After nearly six decades as a photojournalist he is, even now, never without his camera, and is currently photographing several projects including an essay about the new American farmers - but he still doesn’t own a pony.

Several of Bill Eppridge's historic photographs are featured in the exhibition "History's Big Picture" through September 25. A major solo exhibition celebrating Eppridge's Lucie Award will feature many of his most significan photo essays, and will open at Monroe Gallery of Photography September 30 and continue through November 20, 2011.

Sunday, August 7, 2011

EXCERPTS FROM AN EVENING OF PHOTOJOURNALISM



We were honored to welcome two  preeminent names in American journalism, former Time, Life, and People magazine editors Richard Stolley and Hal Wingo for an evening of conversation in the gallery in conjuction with the exhibition "History's Big Picture". The gallery was filled to standing room only as they talked about the power of magazine photography and photojournalism's past, present, and future.

A few excerpts from the evening:

Dick Stolley recounted the events surrounding President John F. Kennedy's assassination, and how he arrived in Dallas on the evening of the assassination and met early the next morning with Abraham Zapruder and secured the original and first-generation print of the "Zapruder film" for LIFE magazine. Stolley continued that he went to the County jail for the transfer of Lee Harvey Oswald, only to learn from a TV camerman that Jack Ruby had shot Oswald as he was leaving the City jail. Stolley then singled out Bob Jackson's Pulitzer-Prize winning photograph in the exhibition and continued:

"Two pictures were taken - a guy named Jack Beers shot a split-second earlier than Bob Jackson and the difference between the two photographs is profound. This captures everything and that split second before just missed. That split second is what makes the difference in so many of the photographs on these walls."




Both Stolley and Wingo covered stories in South during the most violent years of the Civil Rights struggle. Wingo told how he found assignments in the South scared him far more than any in Vietnam. They talked about the power oF the image, and the influence civil rights photographs had on American public opinion at the time.

Dick Stolley: "When LIFE showed up there were already a lot of writers covering the civil rights stories. It was one thing to write about segregationist crowds trying to prevent nine teenagers from going into Central High School, but when you showed these photographs of angry, contorted faces it made all the difference in two ways: one, in us understanding of what was going on in Little Rock and throughout the South, and two, the attitude the people in the photographs had.

It was one thing to be written about, it was a very different thing to wind up in the pages of LIFE magazine with your face contorted in rage...and they caught on to that instantly.

America saw these photograph and thought "Good God, what is happening?"

Hal Wingo continued: "I wonder if anyone here tonight might recognize this picture? Does it ring a bell in any of you?"

He held up this photograph, a double page spread from an old LIFE magazine:




These are the 18 men arrested, including County Deputy Cecil Price and his boss, Sheriff Lawrence Rainey, for the murders of three civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. These 18 men were arraigned not on on State charges, because Mississippi did not charge them, but on Federal charges of violating the rights of the three civil rights workers. This is the picture taken just after their arraignment...do they look worried?

They thought their ace in the hole was they would be judged locally, by a jury of their peers, and that's the safest thing that could happen"

On the state of photojournalism:

Photojournalism today maybe has a broader definition than just the creative work of talented photojournalists who can arrange or capture a moment that will be a lasting impression from these situations. It seems to me today photojournalism is any photograph that is in the sense journalism, that tells the story."  Dick Stolley

We would like to graciously thank Dick and Hal for a wonderful evening of discussion.


Friday, July 15, 2011

"The Soiling of Old Glory”: The Power of a Photograph



The Soiling of Old Glory



“The Soiling of Old Glory”: The Power of a Photograph Lecture by Louis Masur

Thursday, July 14 7-9pm
Fairfield Museum and History Center, Fairfield, CT
$8; Members and Students, $3
To register in advance, call 203-259-1598.

Join us for Trinity College Professor Louis Masur’s engaging discussion of The Soiling of Old Glory, a 1976 Pulitzer Prize winning photograph by Stanley Forman. Learn how an harrowing image of an angry white teenager brandishing an American flag at an African-American man crystallized complex issues about forced busing.


Fairfield Museum IMAGES


Taken in April of 1976, the photograph is of Theodore Landsmark, an African American lawyer heading to Boston's city hall for a case. Here he encountered over one hundred and fifty anti-busing youths from South Boston and Charleston protesting the decision to bus in students from Roxbury, an African American suburb. Entering into this, Landsmark was attacked, ironically, with an American flag, in Boston, home of the Revolution, on the 200th anniversary of the United States. The photo won freelance photographer Stanley J. Forman of the Boston Herald American a Pulitzer Prize.


On April 5, 1976, Stanley Forman, age 30, reported to work early, as he always did. A photographer for the Boston Herald American, Forman had a nose for the news. A year before he had raced to a fire in Boston and captured a horrifying moment as a fire escape gave way and a woman and girl plunged to the ground. The photograph was reprinted around the world and led to changes in fire safety codes.

Sitting at the city desk that April morning, Forman asked what was going on and his editor dispatched him to City Hall Plaza where an anti-busing protest was under way. As Forman arrived at the scene, he saw the group coming towards him. He also saw a black man walking across the plaza and sensed there might be trouble. Forman was too close to get a picture with the lenses on his two cameras, so he quickly changed to a 20mm lens. He started shooting, but heard the motor drive failing and he began taking single frames manually. The entire incident lasted ten or fifteen seconds; Forman took some twenty-odd shots, though a few of the negatives ran together. As he returned to the office, he had no idea what he had.

It did not take long to discover that the image of a protester wielding the American flag as a weapon to attack the man identified as Theodore Landsmark, an attorney, was a powerful one. Some editors feared that publishing it might inflame the already volatile racial situation in Boston. But it had happened, it was news, and, in the year of the bicentennial, it captured something profound about patriotism, race, and violence in America. The Boston Herald American ran it on the front page on April 6. The photograph appeared as well in the New York Times, Washington Post, and many other papers around the country.

A week or so after taking the photograph, Forman learned that he had won the Pulitzer Prize for his fire escape picture the year before. As he prepared to submit the flag photograph for Pulitzer consideration a colleague suggested the title “The Soiling of Old Glory.” It is an ideal title for a stunning spot news photograph. In April 1977, Forman learned that he had again won the Pulitzer Prize for his work on that April day. Two years later, he was part of the staff that won the Prize for coverage of the blizzard of 1978. The most accomplished spot news photographer of his era, Forman is now an equally accomplished, award-winning television news photographer.

Louis P. Masur
Trinity College

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

PBS "FREEDOM RIDERS" DOCUMENTARY TO BROADCAST MAY 16


Paul Schutzer: Freedom Riders Julia Aaron & David Dennis sitting on board interstate bus as they and 25 others are escorted by 2 National Guardsmen holding bayonets, on way from Montgomery, AL to Jackson, MS, May, 1961




Kennedys, King Recall 1961’s Freedom Riders
Via Bloomberg


With a thriller’s pace and the emotional heft of a battlefield journal, PBS’s remarkable new documentary “Freedom Riders” recounts the bloody anti- segregation bus rides of 1961 that helped kill Jim Crow in the Deep South.

Combining new interviews with the aging riders with harrowing footage of their brave, battered younger selves, “Freedom Riders” brings to vivid life a wrenching moment in American history. Fifty years on and with the movement’s successes long charted, this installment of PBS’s “American Experience” reconstructs those tense weeks with edgy momentum.

In May 1961, civil rights activists, both black and white, boarded several Greyhound and Trailways buses in Washington D.C., en route to New Orleans. At various points, including Birmingham, Alabama, and Jackson, Mississippi, the nonviolent participants would challenge state laws by ignoring signs separating “whites” and “coloreds” at bus-station waiting areas and diners.

Though hardly naive, the riders (and, quickly enough, the nation) were stunned by the savage response. In Anniston, Alabama, a full bus was torched and the riders attacked with baseball bats as they disembarked. Birmingham police, led by the defiantly racist Bull Connor, looked away as the local Ku Klux Klan beat male and female civil-rights activists senseless.

Call From Kennedys

“Freedom Riders” also delves beyond the history-book basics, revealing behind-the-scenes machinations of the nation’s most powerful men.

President John Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, consumed and distracted by Cold War politics, were drawn inexorably into the headline-making Southern chaos. Martin Luther King, at first opposed to the dangerous campaign, soon became a symbol of the movement, even as younger activists questioned his relevance.

With a thorough roster of interviewees, writer and director Stanley Nelson weaves together various strands and perspectives into propulsive storytelling. Among the participants: John Patterson, the governor of Alabama who refused a telephone plea for help from the Kennedys, and John Seigenthaler, an administrative assistant to Robert Kennedy sent to quell the violence.

But the story belongs to the riders: Charles Person, a Morehouse College student and youngest member of the first wave of activists; Diane Nash, a student leader in Nashville, Tennessee, who organized replacements when the initial riders were beaten and arrested; and Jim Zwerg, a white student from Wisconsin attacked by Klansmen.

Those three are just a few of the more than 400 people who eventually boarded the nation’s buses that summer in the name of civil rights. Nelson does them all justice.

“Freedom Riders” airs May 16 on PBS at 9 p.m. New York time. Check your local listings.

(Greg Evans is a critic for Muse, the arts and leisure section of Bloomberg News. Opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer on the story: Greg Evans at gregeaevans@yahoo.com

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

50 years later, Freedom Rides still resonate

The first Freedom Ride took place on May 4, 1961 when seven blacks and six whites left Washington, D.C., on two public buses bound for the Deep South. They intended to test the Supreme Court's ruling in Boynton v. Virginia (1960), which declared segregation in interstate bus and rail stations unconstitutional.


In the first few days, the riders encountered only minor hostility, but in the second week the riders were severely beaten. Outside Anniston, Alabama, one of their buses was burned, and in Birmingham several dozen whites attacked the riders only two blocks from the sheriff's office. With the intervention of the U.S. Justice Department, most of CORE's Freedom Riders were evacuated from Birmingham, Alabama to New Orleans. John Lewis, a former seminary student who would later lead SNCC and become a US congressman, stayed in Birmingham.
 
 
DESCRIPTION
Joseph Postiglione
(Collection of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute)
The aftermath of a mob attack on a Freedom Ride bus in Anniston, Alabama

CORE Leaders decided that letting violence end the trip would send the wrong signal to the country. They reinforced the pair of remaining riders with volunteers, and the trip continued. The group traveled from Birmingham to Montgomery without incident, but on their arrival in Montgomery they were savagely attacked by a mob of more than 1000 whites. The extreme violence and the indifference of local police prompted a national outcry of support for the riders, putting pressure on President Kennedy to end the violence.

The riders continued to Mississippi, where they endured further brutality and jail terms but generated more publicity and inspired dozens more Freedom Rides. By the end of the summer, the protests had spread to train stations and airports across the South, and in November, the Interstate Commerce Commission issued rules prohibiting segregated transportation facilities.  (via CORE)

More: It’s been 50 years now, but there are times when Charles Person still finds it hard to talk about the summer of 1961 without his voice breaking.


Steve Schapiro: Summer of 1965 Freedom Bus Riders