Monroe Gallery of Photography specializes in 20th- and 21st-century photojournalism and humanist imagery—images that are embedded in our collective consciousness and which form a shared visual heritage for human society. They set social and political changes in motion, transforming the way we live and think—in a shared medium that is a singular intersectionality of art and journalism.
— Sidney and Michelle Monroe
We are happy to share the video of the final part of our three part summer
Art Law Lecture Series -- The REMIX Culture: Appropriation Art and Fair Use in
the Digital Age. Led by moderator Talia V. Kosh of New Mexico Lawyers for the Arts,
panelists David L. Dirks, Sid Monroe, Casey Bock, Craig Anderson and Benjamin
Allison discussed the high profile Cariou v. Prince appropriation case and the
importance of appropriation and forms of visual referencing in our
culture.
Taking place on August 15th, the panel
discussion was co-sponsored by photo-eye and New Mexico Lawyers for the Arts.
Our thanks to all those who participated.
An anonymous photograph of the crowd at the opening day of the 1956 'Treason Trial', in which 156 anti-apartheid leaders were accused of treason. Photograph: Times Media Collection/Museum Africa, Johannesburg
An ambitious exhibition at New York's International Center of Photography documents the cruelties and absurdities of life in apartheid-era South Africa
What makes this show unmissable is something else: the forceful argument of its Nigerian-born curator, Okwui Enwezor, that apartheid-era South Africa was "essentially a neofascist culture", and photography, more than any other artistic medium, offered a means to reinforce it or to contest it.
It's a broadly chronological show, and its opening galleries show the speed with which South African photography was transformed from an ethnographic practice to an engaged, politicised one.
Photographic output exploded after the institution of apartheid in 1948, especially in the contested spaces of South Africa's cities. In one shot we see a bench marked Whites Only, where a young fair-haired girl sits while her black nanny hovers behind her. In another, an older white woman in pearls is sitting on a bench with the same repugnant text on it – but she's wearing a black sash, the symbol of the non-violent women's anti-apartheid organisation.
South Africa goes on trial, by Alf Khumalo, shows the scenes outside courts when three major sabotage trials started in Pretoria, Cape Town and Maritzburg in 1963. Photograph: Baileys Archives
Photography was never just a documentary tool in South Africa. It was also, especially for the black majority, a means of self-fashioning. Drum Magazine, founded in Johannesburg in 1951, modernised the image of the black South African from rural native to urban habitué. Photographers of all races contributed, and the magazine mixed reportage with fashion and arts photography: there's a killer shot by Jürgen Schadeberg of Miriam Makeba in a strapless dress, singing with her eyes closed. Elsewhere in the show there are grimly fascinating photographs by Billy Monk, a bouncer at a Cape Town nightclub in the 1960s, whose snaps of drunk white revellers necking liquor and groping each other are a far cry from National Party propaganda, or the arid fashion magazines Enwezor displays beneath them.
But as the apartheid regime grew more severe – with the banning of the ANC and the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela – the character of the photos changed. The photographers of this era were rarely on assignment: they were actors in the struggle. During the Soweto Uprising of 1976, Sam Nzima photographed a 12-year-old boy shot by police – and then bundled him into a car to take him to a clinic, where the boy was pronounced dead.
Funerals, in particular, frequently served as a key vehicle for black visibility and political action. Mourners gathered by the thousands after the Sharpeville massacre, Steve Biko lying in his open casket, Winnie Mandela alongside the mothers of assassinated activists: these images came to symbolise the apartheid struggle itself, and made racial separation into a matter of life and death.
Harriet Gavshon in Jan Smuts Ave, Johannesburg, by Gille de Vlieg. The image records part of a Black Sash protest stand on 19 July 1985 in which protesters had to stand alone, or be arrested as an illegal gathering. Photograph: Gille de Vlieg
By the 1980s, the anti-apartheid movement had gone global, and the art world took notice. Hans Haacke created fake advertisements for Alcan, the erstwhile Canadian mining giant with large holdings in South Africa, that featured Biko beaten to death. Adrian Piper defaced pages of the New York Times which featured reports on apartheid with grotesque charcoal drawings. And in turn South African artists, from William Kentridge to Zwelethu Mthethwa, gained international attention for work that exposed the cruelties and absurdities of life under the apartheid regime.
In the final gallery we see the famous photograph, shot by Graeme Williams, of Nelson Mandela emerging from prison, his fist raised in the air. But Enwezor refuses to sound a falsely triumphant note at the end of this commanding exhibition. There are no images of happily queuing black South Africans voting in the 1994 election – but bodies dead in the street, or graves being dug for the victims of political violence that continued even after apartheid's end. And the young photographer Thabiso Sekgala shows us a scene from one of the former bantustans: scorched grass, stunted trees, barbed wire, a rusting car, a shack made of plywood and corrugated iron. There is little sign that anyone will ever live here again. The photograph is called "Inheritance."
Today is the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's famous speech in which he declared, "We choose to go to the moon ..." He delivered it here in Houston, vowing to put Americans on the moon within the decade.
I'm sitting here in the bleachers at Rice, on the stadium's east side, where most of the 40,000 people had gathered to hear Kennedy speak. It was Sept. 12, 1962 and reportedly it was quite hot but clear that day. The crowd included not only the mayor of Houston, the county judge, and the president of Rice, but also the Texas governor and various Texas congressman.
"It was blazingly hot. And poor Lyndon Johnson was drenched with perspiration."
Bob Gomel was photographing Kennedy that day for LIFE magazine. He says the president, unbelievably, didn't seem sweaty at all.
"He was cool, man. He just didn't, he just somehow or other, was oblivious to it. He looked perfectly fine."
Houston was the third stop on a presidential tour of aerospace facilities.
Gomel had gone with him to the rocket facility in Huntsville, Alabama and to Cape Canaveral.
At Rice he was so busy taking photos that he didn't realize the importance of the speech until later.
"It was very daring, it was very daring. I mean the Russians were out there in space. And he elected to put us in competition."
Excerpt from speech: "But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard …"
President JFK and LIFE magazine photographer Bob Gomel
LIFE magazine photographer Bob Gomel, 28, at right in background holding camera, as the president enters the stadium before the famous speech. Photo credit: Unknown.
Unpublished Photo by Bob Gomel
At Houston's Manned Spacecraft Center on 6040 Telephone Road, President Kennedy pokes his head out of a spacecraft in this previously unpublished photo. Photo credit: Bob Gomel.
President at the Podium
At Rice University, the presidential speech that ignited the dream. Photo by: Bob Gomel
"We choose to go to the moon ..."
"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard ..." Photo by: Bob Gomel
Space Industry Tour
President John F. Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon Johnson began their space industry tour on Sept. 11, 1962 at rocket-production facilities in Huntsville, Alabama. Photo credit: Bob Gomel.
President JFK and VP Lyndon Johnson
President Kennedy, with Vice President Johnson by his side, speaks at Cape Canaveral during his 1962 tour of U.S. aerospace facilities. Photo credit: Bob Gomel.
President Kennedy at Cape Canaveral
President Kennedy at Cape Canaveral. Photo credit: Bob Gomel.
President Kennedy walking into Rice Stadium
President Kennedy walking into Rice stadium. Photo by: Bob Gomel
President at the Podium
At Rice University, the presidential speech continues. Photo by: Bob Gomel
President with Clenched Fist
President Kennedy with clenched fist during speech. Photo by: Bob Gomel
President during Convocation
President Kennedy during Rice University's Convocation. Photo byBob Gomel
Rice presidential historian Douglas Brinkley says this was not only the most important event in Rice's 100-year history, but it was also one of Kennedy's best and most successful speeches, in which he sold the American public on a vast public works project, that despite its expense, united the country.
"It was a way to get Congress to appropriate hundreds of billions of dollars into the space program. This was the single largest public discovery project ever. In scope, it dwarfed the Panama Canal. Maybe only the interstate highway system of Eisenhower is comparable."
Brinkley says Kennedy wisely sold the project as more than just a Cold War space race with the Soviets.
"Kennedy framed it as the march of human civilization into the galaxies. And framed it in that language of breaking the shackles of earth."
Brinkley notes that this was the last time a U.S. President managed to unite the country around a vast, expensive, and noble goal.
The tragedy of the Vietnam war, followed by Ronald Reagan's call to shrink government, made Americans more skeptical about public spending, especially on infrastructure and exploration.
"We aren't seeming to do public discovery anymore. It's all become private sector. And you don't have the government leading the charge on one big grand possibility like Kennedy threw out in front of the 40,000 people at Rice Stadium."
What are the ethical responsibilities of a photojournalist who chooses to cover conflict? Can he or she be truly neutral, or do they have a responsibility to reflect the moral and political imbalances of the situations they report on?
The panel will explore the ethical pressures on photojournalists in conflict and will consider their accountability for the positions they take and the pictures they make, how they make them, where they place the work and the voice they attach to it. The discussion will consider the responsibilities and consequences, intended and otherwise, of reporting on conflict.
Marcus Bleasdale – Photographer, VII
Jason Cone – Communications Director, Doctors Without Borders USA
Philip Gourevitch – Journalist, The New Yorker
Thomas Keenan – Director of the Human Rights Project, Bard College
Kira Pollack – Director of Photography, Time Magazine
Stephen Mayes, Moderator – Managing Director, VII
More and more independent journalists and citizens are putting themselves on the front lines to cover city halls and city streets, politics and protests — and they’re doing so without the support or protection afforded staff at established newsrooms.
Indeed, these journalists undertake incredible personal and legal risks to do their work. The Committee to Protect Journalists found that of the 179 journalists imprisoned worldwide in 2011, 86 were digital journalists and 78 were freelancers. Here in the U.S., nearly 90 journalists — many of whom are independents or freelancers — have been arrested or detained in the past year, and in state after state people have scuffled with police over their right to record.
We cannot build a bright future for news if we cannot create ways to protect and support the independent and citizen journalists who are trying to create that future.
Some of these journalists are building new networks of support to expand their reach and insulate them from legal threats. Learn more about these ad-hoc support networks in my post on PBS’ Media Shift site.
Magazine photographer followed Kennedy during 1968 presidential campaign
Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/09/02/3499126/exhibit-showcases-photographers.html#storylink=cpy
Life magazine photographer Bill Eppridge shadowed Bobby Kennedy on the 1968 presidential campaign trail, witnessing everything from quiet moments to massive rallies.
“There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think about that man,” Eppridge said.
Now, with politics on center stage in Charlotte, a special exhibit featuring nearly 40 of Eppridge’s photos of Kennedy will be on display.
The show, “One America, One American,” is sponsored by The Echo Foundation and The Charlotte Observer.
Housed in the Observer’s lobby, the exhibition is open to the public Sept. 4-Oct. 19, following The Echo Foundation’s 15th annual award gala opening Monday.
Eppridge, born in 1938 and still taking photographs, will attend the opening, as will Kennedy’s oldest daughter, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a former lieutenant governor of Maryland. Townsend will accept the foundation’s inaugural Family Legacy Award on behalf of the Kennedy family.
Former presidential candidate and retired Gen. Wesley Clark will deliver the night’s keynote address, “Courageous Leadership in Turbulent Times.”
Eppridge, a self-taught photographer and veteran of Life, National Geographic and Sports Illustrated, said the exhibit’s timing – coinciding with the Democratic National Convention – is “really special.”
“I think a lot of (delegates) don’t really know who he was or what he stood for or the importance of that man, and maybe this will get them thinking about where we’ve been or where we might be able to go,” he said.
Before Kennedy became a Democratic senator from New York, he was attorney general in the administration of his brother, John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963. Bobby Kennedy was an icon of the civil rights movement and took a strong stance against the war in Vietnam.
Eppridge said Bobby Kennedy’s importance lay in his honesty, popularity and dedication to getting troops home from Vietnam as soon as possible.
“I had quite unusual access to that man. I heard and saw and knew things that other people didn’t, and I realized that he was dead serious when he told us, ‘We are out of Vietnam on the day I take office,’ ” Eppridge said. “I don’t think anything was impossible to him.”
The Echo Foundation will also display the winning photographs from its international student photojournalism competition, which sought photography responding to the question, “What does democracy or tyranny; justice or injustice look like?”
From more than 500 entries from students across the globe, Tobin Jones, who attends the University of Westminster in the United Kingdom, was chosen as grand-prize winner.
Jones won the opportunity to travel to Charlotte during the convention and take photos alongside Eppridge for one day.
Want to go?
The free public exhibit, “One America, One American,” is open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday-Friday and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 4-Oct. 19 in the Observer lobby, 600 S. Tryon St.
Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/09/02/3499126/exhibit-showcases-photographers.html#storylink=cpy
Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/09/02/3499126/exhibit-showcases-photographers.html#storylink=cpy
