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

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

With Their Own Eyes: Photographers Witness the March on Washington

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Fields of Vision" series features 20th-century photographers Gordon Parks, Arthur Rothstein, and Carl Mydans

 

Carl Mydans: Cafe in Pikesville, Tennessee, 1936 (for the Farm Security Administration) c.Time Inc

via artdaily.com

WASHINGTON, D.C.- The more than 172,000 black-and-white and 1,600 color images that comprise the Farm Security Administration Office of War Information (FSA/OWI) Collection at the Library of Congress offer a detailed portrait of life in the United States from the years of the Great Depression through World War II.

Selected images from the works of FSA/OWI photographers Gordon Parks (1912-2006), Arthur Rothstein (1915-1985) and Carl Mydans (1907-2004) are now featured in the Library of Congress series titled "Fields of Vision."

These new titles join the first six volumes in the series, which feature the work of FSA/OWI photographers Russell Lee (1903-1987), Ben Shahn (1898-1969), Marion Post Wolcott (1910-1990), Esther Bubley (1921-1998), Jack Delano (1914-1997) and John Vachon (1914-1975).

Edited by Amy Pastan, an independent editor and book packager, and published by D Giles Ltd. in association with the Library of Congress, each volume in the series includes an introduction to the work of the featured FSA photographer by a leading author.

Headed by Roy L. Stryker, the government’s documentary project employed many relatively unknown names who later became some of the 20th century’s best-known photographers.

Gordon Parks, the only black FSA photographer, was "a Renaissance man," writes Charles Johnson in his introduction to the volume. Parks was a writer, musician, poet, composer, photojournalist and motion-picture director, with many "firsts" to his credit. "The first black director in Hollywood, he opened the door for young auteurs, such as Spike Lee and John Singleton," writes Johnson.

The youngest FSA photographer, Arthur Rothstein was "the truest child of the New Deal," writes George Packer in his introductory essay. Fresh out of Columbia University with a belief in the government’s social improvement efforts, Rothstein planned to earn money for medical school. But after joining the government project, he changed his career path. By the age of 25 he was a staff photographer for Look magazine and eventually became its director of photography. He joined Parade magazine in 1972 as director of photography and remained there until his death in 1985.

A graduate of Boston University’s School of Journalism, Carl Mydans was an experienced photographer with credits in Time magazine when he joined the documentary project in 1930. He later moved to the new magazine Life, and on to a celebrated career as a war photographer. Says author Annie Proulx, "He identified himself as a photojournalist and his interest in the massive global events of the time became his life."

Each 63-page, soft-cover volume in the series is available for $12.95 in bookstores throughout the U.S. and the UK, from D Giles Ltd. and the Library of Congress Sales Shop, Washington, D.C., 20540-4985. Credit-card orders are taken at (888) 682-3557, or shop on the Internet at www.loc.gov/shop/. Reproduction numbers are provided in the books so that reprints may be ordered through the Library’s Photoduplication Service.

Founded in 1800, the Library of Congress is the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution. The Library seeks to spark imagination and creativity and to further human understanding and wisdom by providing access to knowledge through its magnificent collections, programs and exhibitions.