PROJECTIONS 9/11 - 25 YEARS COMMEMORATION

 Via Projections

SAVE THE DATE: PROJECTIONS

9/11 - 25 YEARS COMMEMORATION

BEFORE HISTORY WAS WRITTEN, IT WAS PHOTOGRAPHED


September 6–11, 2026
Live Worldwide via Zoom • 7:00 p.m. EST

Twenty-five years after September 11, 2001, PROJECTIONS brings together 35+ photographers, editors, and visual journalists whose images documented the attacks and shaped how the world understood them.

Across six nights, photographers who covered the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, Shanksville, and the White House will share firsthand accounts of that extraordinary day and its aftermath.

Now the witnesses return to tell the stories behind the images that became history.

Among the confirmed presenters:

• Joel Meyerowitz • Peter Turnley • David Hume Kennerly • Steve McCurry • David Friend • MaryAnne Golon • Ruth Fremson • Jennifer S. Altman • Thomas Dallal • David Handschuh • Jim Lowney • Ron Haviv • Mark Edward Harris • Stan Honda • Mario Tama • Jose Jimenez-Tirado • Pete Souza • Rabbi Irwin Kula • Jeff Swensen • Robert Clark • Matthew McDermott • Gary Suson • Todd Maisel • Gulnara Samoilva • Lori Grinker • Thomas Franklin • Jason Florio • Lyle Owerko • Eric Draper • Spencer Platt • Shannon Stapleton • Phil Penman • Lauren Walsh • Susan Watts • Todd Maisel

The programs will be recorded and permanently archived by PROJECTIONS as an educational resource for future generations.

SAVE YOUR PLACE

Join us…

September 6–11, 2026

7:00 p.m. EST each evening

Live Worldwide via Zoom

Related Exhibit: 9/11 - In Remembrance

America The Beautiful Review in Musée Magazine: "the exhibition examines representations of the country while complicating what it means to be American"

 Via Musée Magazine

Written by Georgina Laube

August 6, 2026

The United States is one of the most visually and culturally represented countries in the world, yet despite its constant representation, a lingering question remains: is the image of the country shaped more by what it is or by what it is imagined to be?

AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL, which opened over Memorial Day weekend at Monroe Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and runs through August 9, directly engages with this question. The timing of the exhibition is particularly significant. Memorial Day is both the unofficial beginning of summer and a national holiday dedicated to commemorating those who died in service to the United States. Against this backdrop, the exhibition examines representations of the country while complicating what it means to be American.

Ryan Vizzions: Protesters face off with police and the National Guard on February 1, 2017, near Cannon Ball, North Dakota. | Courtesy of artist and gallery ©.

Bringing together more than 45 photographs, the group exhibition explores the complexity of the United States, its identity, its shared culture, and what it means to be an American on an individual and collective scale as the nation approaches its 250th anniversary during one of the most politically and socially divisive periods in its history.

Ryan Vizzions: January 7th, 2026 - After the murder of Renee Good by a masked federal agent, a vigil was held in her honor. Upward of 10,000 Minnesotans showed up to pay their respects at the location she was killed | Courtesy of artist and gallery ©.

The works on view range from photographs of the Statue of Liberty and the vast American plains to images of protestors exercising their First Amendment rights, moments of conflict born from struggles for freedom and equality, and scenes of everyday life in both rural and urban communities throughout the years. Together, these photographs create an honest portrait of America, capturing both its beauty and its complexities while highlighting its constant evolution.

Margaret Bourke-White/ ©Life Picture Collection

Statue of Liberty, New York Harbor, 1952 | Courtesy of artist and gallery 

Among the exhibition's recurring symbols is the American flag. Historically, the flag has functioned as a symbol of the nation and its people, but its meanings have never been singular. For some, it represents hope, opportunity, and the promise of a better life. For others, it can signify dominance or fear. It has also long served as a symbol of collective unity, communicating the belief that the nation is stronger together than divided.

David Butow: A protester at Ferguson police headquarters two nights after the Grand Jury decision not to indict police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown, November 24, 2014 | Courtesy of artist and gallery ©.

From photographs of the flag being raised at Ground Zero following September 11 to images in which it appears during memorial services for fallen service members, the exhibition presents the flag across a variety of contexts. In doing so, AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL encourages viewers to critically examine what the symbol communicates today and how its meaning continues to shift. The exhibition makes clear that the flag can simultaneously function as a symbol of freedom and a symbol of oppression, prompting viewers to consider what happens when a national symbol becomes contested and no longer universally embraced.

Nina Berman F**k the KKK, New Jersey, 1990 | Courtesy of the artist and gallery ©.

Musée Magazine is a dynamic, print and digital biennial, and interactive website dedicated to featuring works by emerging and established artists. Sometimes quirky, sometimes sensual, always unpredictable, Musée moves on the cutting edge as an unparalleled photo-based platform. Today, Musée finds itself at the vanguard of photography and film culture. We strive to empower promising artists as they navigate and launch future careers throughout the global photographic community, while commingling with industry influencers to provide relevant content for academics, students, and photography aficionados alike. Like a photographic library, Musée has a broad appeal, encompassing all genres from the photo-world’s beloved masters to the new, exciting, and unexpected. 

Gray Zones: Unmaking the Myth of a Polarized Nation Features Photography By Nina Berman and Ron Haviv

 Via Puffin Foundation

Gray Zones: Unmaking the Myth of a Polarized Nation

Our summer exhibit was inspired by the semiquincentennial of the United States, which feels less and less united with every passing day. And yet the reality is that all of us, whether we are urban or rural, queer or straight, born in the USA or elsewhere, share similar struggles, loves, hardships, and joys. The dominant narrative is invested in dividing us, in order to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of the few while keeping the rest of us on the margins. This exhibition – an extraordinary collection of work by highly accomplished photographers – challenges viewers to reconsider what are traditionally thought of as lines of division. It is an invitation to see ourselves in each other, regardless of race class, or other differences. It is a reminder that solidarity is not only possible but necessary if we are to continue as a nation.

The show will open on Saturday, June 20th. Puffin Brooklyn will be open that day from 12 pm to 5 pm. At 1 pm, several of the photographers, along with curator and participant Danny Wilcox Frazier, will discuss their works and the themes of the show. Light refreshments will be served, no rsvp needed. Please join us!

Opening June 20th, 2026

12 pm to 5 pm

With special panel discussion at 1 pm, featuring several photographers in the show along with curator and participant Danny Wilcox Frazier

An exhibition of work by eminent photographers that contradicts the narrative of extreme and intractable division in the USA

Featuring: Nina Berman, Sheila Pree Bright, Danny Wilcox Frazier, Jordan Gale, Ron Haviv, Tyrel Iron Eyes, Brooklynn Kascel, Erin Kirkland, Zun Lee, John Lowenstein, Carlos Javier Ortiz.

Curated by Danny Wilcox Frazier

Puffin Foundation

227 5th Ave. Brooklyn Between President and Carroll.

Photographs by Nina Berman and Ron Haviv are included in the current exhibition America The Beautiful, through August 9, 2026.

Broken fingers and busted cameras: Photojournalists say ICE targeted them during wild clash outside Delaney Hall

Via amNY

May 29. 2026

Mark Peterson: ICE officer confronts protesters, Delaney Hall, NJ, May 26 2026

"The First Amendment freedom of the press was not enough to shield photojournalists from assault by ICE agents outside Delaney Hall late on Thursday night.

Photojournalists in federal agents’ sights

As the night grew later, several photojournalists alleged they were purposely targeted and attacked by some of the agents.

Reuters photojournalist Ryan Murphy told amNewYork that he was beaten with a baton over the last several nights, and on Thursday, they aimed for his camera. He believes the blow they struck broke a finger.

“I had just photographed a guy on the ground getting bear-sprayed in the face, turned around to another protester getting shoved or something, and I was just hit by a baton in the finger next to my flash, and yeah, my hand just went numb. My flash flew on the ground,” Murphy recalled. “There is a big gash on my middle finger. It was bleeding pretty badly, I think it’s broken.”

Murphy ultimately left the scene and transported himself to a local hospital for treatment.

Another photographer alleged she was purposefully shoved to the ground. Madison Swart, a frequent contributor to The New York Times, said she was documenting the clash when an agent struck her with a baton, knocking her to the ground.

“I was moving back as they were asking us to and I got shoved with a baton, and I fell because it was very forceful. And then another agent did help me up, but it wasn’t the same one that pushed me,” Swart said. “I was just a little in shock, just because I’ve never fallen while shooting before, and so I, I’m kind of like still trying to process in my head how I could have reacted maybe a little bit better, but at the same time, when someone who is like twice my body size pushes me, I don’t know if there’s much more I can really do.”

Another photographer could be seen huddling in the fetal position as agents trampled over her, while another prominent photographer, who asked not to be named, had the top of his camera smashed."

Full article with photographs here.

The Photography Show Presented by AIPAD Announces 2026 Programming ; Includes Photojournalism: Witness + Vision With Ron Haviv

 Via AIPAD

The Photography Show Presented by AIPAD  Announces 2026 Programming  The Park Avenue Armory | 643 Park Avenue, New York April 22-26, 2026 | VIP Opening Wednesday, April 22, 2026 

Friday, April 24 at 5:30PM Photojournalism: Witness + Vision Photographers Giles Clarke, Ron Haviv, and Shelby Lee Adams join moderator Rick Smolan for a conversation on the evolving role of photojournalism and documentary practice today. Reflecting on the power and responsibility of the image, the panel considers how personal vision, ethics and context shape the stories photographers tell—and how those stories resonate in an age of constant visual exchange.

The Photography Show presented by AIPAD is pleased to announce its programming for the 45th edition of the fair. Anchored by AIPAD Talks, the series will commence on Thursday, April 24, at 1PM when this year’s AIPAD Award winner, Deborah Wilis, University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, will be in conversation with Brendan Embser, Senior Editor at Aperture. AIPAD Talks will take place over the four public days of The Photography Show in the famed Veterans Room designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany, from Thursday to Sunday. 

Highlights include Interventions in Photography, with artists David Alekhuogie, Gail Albert Halaban and Aundre Larrow in conversation, moderated by Elise Swopes, Founder, Sunrise Art Club + Night on the Yard, to discuss the varied techniques, tools and interventions photographers are using today throughout the creative process—whether classic darkroom edits or experimental mixed media and AI-assisted workflows—that continue to push photography into new territory; photographer and visual artist Laurie Simmons joins Drew Sawyer, Sondra Gilman Curator of Photography at the Whitney Museum of American Art and co-curator of the 2026 Whitney Biennial, for a dynamic conversation tracing the evolution of her practice and the ideas driving her work today; America at 250/Divergent Realities: Photography and Documentation, featuring Stephanie Tung, The Byrne Family Curator of Photography, Peabody Essex Museum; Makeda Best, Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs, Oakland Museum of Contemporary Art; and Jami Powell, Associate Director for Curatorial Affairs and Curator of Indigenous Art at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, in conversation to explore how photography has shaped and complicated the ways we document, remember and challenge canonical American history and how images both preserve national memory and challenge dominant narratives; and From Concept to Feature: Creative Directors on the Power of Photography, featuring leading creative directors Matteo Mobilio of WSJ Magazine, Samantha Adler of Cosmopolitan and Noelle Lacombe of The Cut in conversation moderated by CNN Senior Style Reporter Rachel Tashjian to to explore the editorial process from initial concept to final spread, unpacking how image-making decisions reflect, challenge and ultimately influence the way we see the world.  

“This year’s AIPAD Talks program highlights photography’s power to question history, shape identity and inspire new ways of seeing,” said Lydia Melamed Johnson, Executive Director of AIPAD and The Photography Show. “From groundbreaking artists to visionary curators and scholars, these conversations reflect the depth, diversity and dynamism that define the photographic community ."

  Full schedule here

  Visit us during The Photography Show in Booth B10

Monroe Gallery Photojournalists Documenting Minneapolis ICE Protests and Demonstrations

 January 18, 2026

Monroe Gallery photojournalists are covering the thousands of ICE and Border Patrol officers flooding into Minneapolis and the intensifying situation after the fatal ICE shooting of Renee Good.

Mark Peterson

Via The New York Times

Ron Haviv

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David Butow

 

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Ryan Vizzions

Via Instagram



“The public should assume responsibility for creating an accurate record of what’s happening. It’s a big job that requires participation from all of civil society, including the local press, religious and community groups, librarians and teachers. Everyone. In every city. This is not an act of protest. It is record-keeping. There will come a time when people will want to know what it was like to be here, now. What was it like to work in a food truck or at a Home Depot when federal agents showed up? What was it like to be randomly stopped or followed on the sidewalk while walking home from a store? What’s it like for Native Americans to be accused by ICE of being undocumented?” --Poynter

How two photojournalists are dealing with the trauma of documenting immigrant detentions at Federal Plaza

 Via AM New York

October 28, 2025

ICE in courts: How two photojournalists are dealing with the trauma of documenting immigrant detentions at Federal Plaza

Almost every day for five months, photojournalists David Dee Delgado and Carol Guzy have entered 26 Federal Plaza with cameras in hand, ready to capture what many are calling one of the most startling stories of this century: ICE detainments inside the immigration court.

Guzy, 69, and Delgado, 49, have walked the hallways of 26 Federal Plaza, working alongside amNewYork and other outlets to document masked federal agents arresting immigrants who attended legally mandated court hearings. With Delgado on assignment for Reuters, a photo agency, and Guzy performing a long-term photo project, both shutterbugs knew that the proliferation and escalation of President Trump’s immigration enforcement crackdown was going to be a vital story to tell. - click for full article

"Guzy, a multi-time Pulitzer Prize winner, has covered war zones, the toll of gun violence, and much more, yet says covering ICE arrests has affected her unlike anything else in her long career."

"I know down the line, I’m pretty sure this is gonna come out in some type of f**ked up way. I’m probably gonna need therapy, but, yeah, but at this moment, you know, I just go through the motions,” Delgado said."

"The loss to history from the purging of photo morgues is unquantifiable”

Via Columbia Journalism Review

October 28, 2025 

Who’s Going to Save Local Newspaper Archives?

Archivists worry in particular about photographs that have never been digitized

"Frank LoMonte, a University of Georgia law professor who has studied the loss of photo archives from local newspapers, estimates that only a small minority of papers have the financial resources and foresight to proactively safeguard their archives. LoMonte especially worries about unpublished photographs, because they provide an unfiltered perspective on what life was like—and offer a window into how editors at the time chose to portray major news events, and what they chose not to include. “The loss to history from the purging of photo morgues is unquantifiable,” he said. " - click for full article

Federal judge hands press groups wins in lawsuits against LAPD, DHS: "The First Amendment demands better”

Via USA Today

September 15, 2025 

A federal judge handed press and civil liberties groups wins in two separate cases against the Los Angeles Police Department and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem over the treatment of journalists covering immigration raid protests.

U.S. District Judge Hernan D. Vera's preliminary injunctions bar, among other actions, the police department from arresting journalists for failing to disperse or otherwise interfering with journalists' ability to cover Los Angeles protests. The Department of Homeland Security's officers are also barred from "dispersing, threatening or assaulting" journalists who haven't "committed a crime unrelated to failing to obey a dispersal order." --click to read full article

"There's an old line in policing: We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way,” Adam Rose, press rights chair of the Los Angeles Press Club, said in a news release following the rulings. “Press organizations have been trying to help LAPD for years take the easy way, just asking them to train officers and discipline offenders. They wouldn't stop resisting. LAPD failed to police themselves. Now a judge is doing it for them."

Federal Judge Tells LAPD to Stop Shooting at Journalists

 Via The New Republic

July 11, 2025

U.S. District Judge Hernán D. Vera blocked Los Angeles police from using less lethal munitions and other crowd control weapons against reporters—and told them to stop arresting journalists.

 A federal judge just had to remind police that they shouldn’t shoot at journalists after several violent encounters during the protests opposing the Trump administration’s disastrous ICE raids in Los Angeles.

U.S. District Judge Hernán D. Vera blocked the Los Angeles Police Department from wrongfully preventing journalists from accessing closed off areas, detaining or arresting journalists while they’re reporting, and using less lethal munitions (LLMs) and other crowd control weapons against them.

In a 14 page-filing, Vera said that the First Amendment claims made by the Los Angeles Press Club were likely to succeed, and granted them a temporary restraining order. “Indeed, given the fundamental nature of the speech interests involved and the almost daily protests throughout Southern California drawing media coverage, the identified harm is undoubtedly imminent and concrete,” he wrote in a filing.

Vera recounted multiple instances of journalists being cordoned away from the protests or detained and arrested by officers. Documentarian and activist Anthony Orendoff was detained for four days despite telling officers he was a member of the press.

Vera also recounted many instances of violence against members of the press. In one instance, an officer appeared to aim his gun at 9News Australia’s Lauren Tomasi while she was reporting live, and fired a rubber bullet which hit her in the leg on air. Photojournalist Michael Nigro, who stood high above the protests in a press vest and helmet, heard the sound of LLMs hitting a pole by his head, and later that day was struck in the helmet by a rubber bullet. Another unidentified photojournalist with a press pass was pushed over by a police officer, and trampled by a police horse.

Vera barred officers from “prohibiting a journalist from entering or remaining in the closed areas.” The judge also prohibited officers from “intentionally assaulting, interfering with, or obstructing any journalist” who is “gathering, “receiving, or processing information for communication to the public.”

He also barred officers from “citing, detaining, or arresting a journalist who is in a closed area for failure to disperse, curfew violation, or obstruction of a law enforcement officer for gathering, receiving, or processing information,” or using LLMs, like rubber bullets, and other crowd control measures like flash-bangs and chemical irritants like tear gas.

A hearing for a preliminary injunction was set for July 24.

Related: Via Poynter As police face lawsuits over attacks on journalists during LA protests, experts warn press safety is disappearing across the US

"Yet these cases expose a deeper national crisis: Even in states with explicit legal protections for journalists, law enforcement often disregards those safeguards with impunity during high-tension protests, revealing the fragility of press freedoms in the face of unchecked police power."

Reporting under fire: Protests and press freedom in Los Angeles, a virtual webinar event with Freedom of the Press Foundation

 Via Freedom Of The Press Foundation

Wednesday, July 9, 3 p.m. EDT/12 p.m. PDT

Webinar Registration - Zoom

Journalists covering recent demonstrations in California have been assaulted, detained, shot with crowd-control munitions, and had their equipment searched — simply for doing their jobs.

Freelance and independent reporters are especially vulnerable, yet they continue to document how immigration raids impact communities and how law enforcement responds to civil unrest. Some of the journalists joining us are also plaintiffs in lawsuits pushing back against police actions that threaten press freedom and violate the First Amendment. 

Join us to hear their firsthand accounts and learn what it means to uphold the public’s right to know in the streets and on the front lines. 

If you cannot attend, help protect the rights of these journalists and defend press freedom everywhere by making a donation to support our work at this link.

On July 9th, we’ll be joined by:

- Adam Rose, Press rights chair and secretary at LA Press Club

- Ben Camacho, Journalist and co-founder of The Southlander

- Sean Beckner-Carmitchel, Independent videographer

- Tina-Desiree Berg, Journalist for Status Coup and other outlets

- Caitlin Vogus, Freedom of the Press Foundation senior adviser

Mark Peterson is on the ground, capturing the scene in Milwaukee for New York Magazine

 Via New York Magazine

July 15 

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Queens, New York: lunch with the Maestro. Tony Vaccaro photographed by Ashley Gilbertson

 

Via Instagram

June 1, 2022

Queens, New York: lunch with the Maestro. Tony Vaccaro photographed by Ashley Gilbertson

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Monroe Gallery of Photography presents two exhibitions in the gallery concurrent with on-line viewing

Monroe Gallery of Photography presents two exhibitions in the gallery concurrent with on-line viewing at www.monroegallery.com. The exhibits are on view July 3 through September 13, 2020; the Gallery is open to the public with Covid-19 safe operating procedures. Private viewing appointments are available by reservation. 

Ryan Vizzions: : A church flooded by Hurricane Florence stands silently in its reflection

 in Burgaw, North Carolina, 2018

LIFE ON EARTH

“Life on Earth” is a survey of 20th and 21st Century environmental and climate issues documented by photojournalists. Our world is changing faster – and in more ways – than we could have ever imagined. With social and economic disruption on a scale rarely seen since the end of World War II 75 years ago, the Covid-19 pandemic is also forcing us to completely rethink the notion of ‘business as usual’

The Earth’s climate is changing faster-and in more ways-than we previously imagined. This exhibit of climate related images hopes to promote awareness and motivate advocacy for the health of our planet. A narrated tour is available on our YouTube channel.

Tony Vaccaro: GThe Pink  Balcony, Puerto Rico, 1951

TONY VACCAO

GRIT AND RED WINE

“Grit and Red Wine” is special exhibition of photographs by Tony Vaccaro which includes several new discoveries from his archive being exhibited for the very first time. Tony Vaccaro, now 97, is one of the few people alive who can claim to have survived the Battle of Normandy and COVID-19.  Tony was drafted into WWII, in June of 1944 he was on a boat heading toward Omaha Beach, fighting the enemy while also photographing his experience at great risk. After the war, Tony remained in Germany to photograph the rebuilding of the country for Stars And Stripes magazine. Returning to the US in 1950, Tony started his career as a commercial photographer, eventually working for virtually every major publication: Look, Life, Harper’s Bazaar, Town and Country, Newsweek, and many more. Tony went on to become one the most sought after photographers of his day. Tony attributes his longevity to “blind luck, red wine” and determination.

“To me, the greatest thing that you can do is challenge the world. And most of these challenges I win. That’s what keeps me going.” –Tony Vaccaro, May, 2020

Photographer Tony Vaccaro in Santa Fe

57 years later, Tony Vaccaro returned to the location near Georgia O'Keeffe's home where he made his iconic photograph of Georgia holding " "Pelvic Series, Red with Yellow".

Photo courtesy of Tony Vaccaro Studio

"I took this photo 1960 of Georgia she told me not to take color photo and not to take her art of her studio. Well am sorry Georgia I did the opposite. " - Tony Vaccaro

VIEW THE TONY VACCARO: WAR AND PEACE ON-LINE EXHIBITION HERE

Exhibit reviews and articles

The Santa Fe New Mexican: Monroe Gallery to showcase trove of varied work by photojournalist Tony Vaccaro

The Albuquerque Journal: "The things we live with"

The Santa Fe New Mexican Pasatiempo: Tony Vaccaro's "War and Peace" at Monroe    

The Santa Fe Reporter: Not even a world war stopped this artist

Richard Stolley (left), former Time magazine bureau chief, senior editor and managing editor, and Assistant Managing Editor and Managing Editor of Life magazine, led a Q & A with photographer Tony Vaccaro (right) following the screening of the film "Underfire: The Untold Story of Pfc. Tony Vaccaro" at the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe.

Tony Vaccaro at Monroe Gallery

Photo by R. David Marks

Tony Vaccaro receiving the City of Santa Fe's Veteran's Service medal from

Santa Fe City Commissioner Signe Lindell, June 30, 201

(photo courtesy Tom Blog)

Tony Vaccaro: "War and Peace" remains on view through September 17, 2017

www.monroegallery.com

REVIEW: Margaret Bourke-White: Pioneering Photographer

Margaret Bourke-White, Fort Peck Dam, Fort Peck, MT, silver gelatin photograph, 14” x 11”, 1936

THE Magazine
June, 2015

IMAGINE, IF YOU CAN, A WORLD IN WHICH PHOTOGRAPHS WERE A RARE FORM

 of artistic documentation whose workings few understood. Imagine the United States in the first third of the twentieth century, with illiteracy and poverty key defining characteristics of the pitiable lives led by you and most everyone you knew. Images had nearly the power and drama, then, that they did during the Counter-Reformation in Europe, when the Catholic Church fought back against dull Protestantism with paintings as theatrical as opera sets, their shadowy depths filled with depictions of gruesome martyrdom—lit only at the moment of a would-be saint’s transmutation from agonizingly human into gloriously divine. Radiant sculptural forms of gold and silver reflected not merely the material wealth but the spiritual wealth of a religion that had dominated that part of the world for roughly a millennium. Bring yourself back now, from the seventeenth to the twentieth century and from Europe to the United States, populated by the shell-shocked heroes of the Great War dancing with pretty little flappers, their bobbed hairdos gleaming, and the gangsters, with their molls, who kept the country’s beak wet during Prohibition; imagine, finally, on a late fall day in 1929, stock-market millions vanishing within hours, heartlessly slamming shut the doors to the anything-goes twenties. (While you’re at it, imagine the unthinkable: Wall Street investors with such an overwhelming sense of responsibility that they jumped out of skyscrapers rather than face their own— and their clients’—financial ruin. Incomprehensible!) Meanwhile, the Great Depression loomed in the drought-stricken plains of America’s heartland. In the mind’s eye, these times could only have existed in grayed-out shades of black and white. Color, it seems, had been forgotten.

 

Unlike now, when anybody with a cell phone can, and unfortunately does, take pictures of everything from their breakfast to their genitalia—and makes them available to an unwitting public—only a very few of those initiated into the science of the lens and the alchemy of the darkroom were able to make photographs in the 1930s. Margaret Bourke-White was one of the few, and she led a charge of firsts: the first woman to photograph for LIFE magazine (for you post-Millennials, sort of the Internet of its time), the first accredited female war photographer (in World War II), and the first Western photographer allowed into the Soviet Union to record the proletariat’s triumph of mega-industry over the ease and comfort of privileged individuals.

 

In that heyday of pioneering photographers whom Bourke-White epitomized, black-and-white photography equaled photojournalism, which equaled truth with a capital T. This Truth was on a par with the same truth Americans revered in Norman Rockwell’s “real-life” scenes lifted straight out of a Mayberry without the laugh track, long before there was a Sheriff Taylor, Opie, Deputy Fife, or Aunt Bee. Or even television, for that matter. When images were few and far between, they had a credibility that is lost today in a thick overlay of irony and sheer disbelief. In the 1930s, if it appeared in LIFE magazine, or the Saturday Evening Post, or the newspaper, it was flat-out real.

Viewers lacked the objectivity to read meaning into a photograph as social commentary, for example, any more than the illiterate could read the black marks scratched into the white page.

The always-excellent Monroe Gallery presented their exhibition of silver gelatin photographs by Margaret Bourke-White as art, finding that, for her “as an artist,” photography served “as an instrument to examine social issues from a humanitarian perspective. She witnessed and documented some of the twentieth century’s most notable moments, including the liberation of German concentration camps by General Patton in 1945...” Bourke-White’s picture, “German civilians made to look at instruments of torture and execution at Buchenwald concentration camp, 1945,” is hardly an icon of objectivity. Nor should it be; some truths are beyond apprehension. Not to quibble with our dearly held ideals of photojournalism as an act of witnessing and documenting, but black-and-white imagery exists, among other reasons, when color cannot hold the entirety of its content. We demand this state of in-between-ness from art when what it depicts is too awful for mere reproduction.

While today you can find images of gore online anytime you choose to search for them, that they are not generally reproduced ad infinitum speaks to our understanding of the power of imagery. What Warhol repeated in a nightmarish grid (Jackie’s grief-stricken face on Air Force One en route from Dallas), and Picasso abstracted in his Guernica, Bourke-White reflected in the faces of her “German civilians” at Buchenwald.

Finally, when her country needed shoring up in 1936, during the height of the Depression, LIFE, a burgeoning publication that would become our society’s pocket mirror for at least a couple of decades, chose for its very first cover Bourke-White’s symbol of capitalism’s ultimate success. Her Fort Peck dam picture, all art-deco curves and fat-cat angles, describes more than the enormous potential for hydroelectric power: It is an image of America rediscovering her own righteous might, an America that, like the photographer “Maggie the Indestructible,” would liberate us from ourselves. There was the evidence, right in front of us in it-must­be-true black and white. —Kathryn M Davis

Margaret Bourke-White, Fort Peck Dam, Fort Peck, MT, silver gelatin photograph, 14” x 11”, 1936 ©Time Inc.

 

--The exhibition continues through June 28, 2015