September 4, 1957

Ed Clark—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

Segregationists rousted from an anti-integration protest, Little Rock, Arkansas, 1957

 

 

On September 4, 1957, the "Little Rock Nine" attempted to enter Little Rock Central High School but were turned away by Arkansas National Guard troops called out by the governor. When Elizabeth Eckford arrived at the campus at the intersection of 14^th and Park Streets, she was confronted by an angry mob of segregationist protestors. She attempted to enter at the front of the school but was directed back out to the street by the guardsmen. Walking alone, surrounded by the crowd, she eventually reached the south end of Park Street and sat down on a bench to wait for a city bus to take her to her mother’s workplace. Of her experience, Eckford

They moved closer and closer. ... Somebody started yelling. ... I tried to see a friendly face somewhere in the crowd—someone who maybe could help. I looked into the face of an old woman and it seemed a kind face, but when I looked at her again, she spat on me.

 

Grey Villet

Members of the Little Rock Nine during legal hearings on their attempts to enter Little Rock Central High School, September 1957

Ed Clark—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

Federal troops escorting African American students to school during integration, September, 1957

 

 

Ernest C. Withers

Desegregation of Central High School by The "Little Rock Nine", Little Rock, 1957

 

 

September 25, 1957, became a historic day in the Nation when nine courageous children risked their lives to attend Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Confronted by a hostile crowd and escorted by the Screaming Eagles of the 101st Airborne, they shouldered the burden of integrating a then segregated public school system. Although the Supreme Court’s Landmark 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education struck down racial segregation in public schools, it was the courageous actions of these nine young champions of school integration that tested the strength of that decision. Their actions not only mobilized a Nation to insure that access to a quality education was granted to all Americans, but they helped to define the civil rights movement. They became known as the Little Rock Nine. via LittleRock9.com

Related: LIFE.com         Brave Hearts: Remembering the Little Rock Nine

'This Extraordinary Nexus of Talent': Santa Fe is an unlikely center of photography

The Monroe Gallery specializes in photojournalism—its owners have worked with such legendary Life magazine photographers as Alfred Eisenstaedt, Carl Mydans

and John Loengard. Photo by R. David Marks

Via The Wall Street Journal

'New Mexico is one of those incubators for photography that have developed across the country in apparently unlikely places—Bloomington, Indiana; Rochester, New York; Carmel, [California,]" Kate Ware, the Curator of Photography at the New Mexico Museum of Art, emailed. "Suddenly there is this extraordinary nexus of talent." A succession of outstanding teachers in the photography program at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque in the mid-20th century made it such a center, but it is Santa Fe, a city of 69,000, that was and still is a photography hot spot.

Labor Day "constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country."

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

"Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country."



Labor Day 2012

Labor Day 2011

Labor Day 2010

The 90th Annual Burning of Zozobra, Friday, Aug. 29, 2014

 

 

Zozobra (Old Man Gloom) is a giant marionette effigy that is built and burned every by the Kiwanis Club of Santa Fe to kick off Fiestas de Santa Fe in Santa Fe, New Mexico. As his name suggests, he embodies gloom; by burning him, people destroy the worries and troubles of the previous year in the flames. Anyone with an excess of gloom is encouraged to write down the nature of his or her gloom on a slip of paper and it will be stuffed into Zozobra and burned.

Submit your worries now & watch them go up in digital smoke with

the Burning of Virtual Zozobra

More information here. A link to the Internet live stream will be posteed here.

(The Gallery will close at 2 PM on Friday, August 29 and resume regular hours Saturday and Sunday, 10 - 5.)

Joe McNally Exhibition October 3 - November 23, 2014

A young girl takes to an abandoned building for the shade in January of 1999, Mumbai, India

 



Santa Fe--Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, is pleased to announce a major exhibition by internationally acclaimed American photographer and long-time photojournalist, Joe McNally. The exhibition will open with a public reception for Joe McNally on Friday, October 3, 5 - 7 PM. The exhibition will continue through November 23. (The exhibit is now featured on www.monroegallery.com; also to be announced is a Google Hangout in September.)

The exhibit features more than 45 photographs from Joe McNally’s remarkable career that has spanned more than 30 years and included assignments in 60 countries. Joe was the last staff photographer in the history of LIFE magazine, sharing a legacy with his heroes and mentors—Carl Mydans, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Gordon Parks, John Loengard—who forever influenced and shaped his work. McNally won the first Alfred Eisenstaedt Award for Journalistic Impact for a LIFE coverage titled, “The Panorama of War.” He has been honored numerous times by Communication Arts, PDN, Graphis, American Photo, POY, and The World Press Photo Foundation. His prints are in numerous collections, most significantly the National Portrait Gallery of the United States and National September 11 Memorial & Museum.

McNally is often described as a generalist because of his ability to execute a wide range of assignment work, and was listed at one point by American Photo as one of the “100 Most Important People in Photography” and described by the magazine as “perhaps the most versatile photojournalist working today.” His expansive career has included being an ongoing contributor to the National Geographic - shooting numerous cover stories and highly complex, technical features for the past 25 years; a contract photographer for Sports Illustrated; as well as shooting cover stories for TIME, Newsweek, Fortune, New York, and The New York Times Sunday Magazine.

McNally’s most well-known series is "Faces of Ground Zero - Portraits of the Heros of September 11th", a collection of 246 Giant Polaroid portraits shot in the Moby c Studio near Ground Zero in a three-week period shortly after 9/11. A large group of these historic, compelling, life-size (9’ x 4’) photos were exhibited in seven cities in 2002, and seen by almost a million people. Sales of the exhibit book helped raise over $2 million for the 9/11-relief effort. This collection is considered by many museum and art professionals to be one of the most significant artistic endeavors to evolve from the 9/11 tragedy, and examples are included in the exhibit. Some of McNally’s other renowned photographic series include: “The Future of Flying,” cover & 32-page story, National Geographic Magazine, December 2003. The story, on the future of aviation and the first all digital shoot in the history of that venerable magazine, commemorated the centennial observance of the Wright Brothers' flight. This issue was a National Magazine Award Finalist and his coverage was deemed so noteworthy it has been incorporated into the archives of the Library of Congress.

He regularly writes a popular, irreverent blog  about the travails, tribulations, oddities and very occasional high moments of being a photographer, and has also authored several noteworthy books on photography, two of which, The Moment It Clicks and The Hot Shoe Diaries, cracked Amazon’s Top Ten list of best sellers. While his work notably springs from the time-honored traditions of magazine journalism, McNally has also adapted to the internet driven media world, and was recently named as one of the “Top 5 Most Socially Influential Photographers” by Eye-Fi. His work and his blog are regularly cited in social media surveys as sources of inspiration and industry leadership. He is also among the rare breed of photographer who has bridged the world between photojournalism and advertising, amassing an impressive commercial and advertising client list including FedEx, Nikon, Epson, Sony, Land’s End, General Electric, MetLife, USAA, Adidas, ESPN, the Beijing Cultural Commission, and American Ballet Theater.

A sought-after workshop instructor and lecturer, he has taught at the Santa Fe Photographic Workshop, the Eddie Adams Workshop, the National Geographic Society, Smithsonian Institution, the Annenberg Space for Photography, Rochester Institute of Technology, the Disney Institute, and the U.S. Department of Defense. He received his bachelor’s and graduate degrees from Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, and returns there to lecture on a regular basis. Recently, he was named as a Nikon USA Ambassador, an honor which has a special reverence for him, as he bought his first Nikon camera in 1973, and for forty years, from the deserts of Africa to the snows of Siberia, he has seen the world through those cameras.

 

Monroe Gallery of Photography was founded by Sidney S. Monroe and Michelle A. Monroe. Building on more than four decades of collective experience, the gallery specializes in 20th and 21st Century Photojournalism. The gallery also represents a select group of contemporary and emerging photographers.

 

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


 Preview the exhibit here.

 

Bolshoi Ballet, Moscow, 1997

 

 

“Police militarization has been among the most consequential and unnoticed developments of our time, and it is now beginning to affect press freedom.”

Occupied Ferguson. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

“Police militarization has been among the most consequential and unnoticed developments of our time, and it is now beginning to affect press freedom.”


HuffPost, Washington Post reporters assaulted, arrested in Ferguson


Police firing tear gas at a TV news camera crew, in Ferguson, Mo., which is a city in the United States of America


"A SWAT team. To take out cameras. In the United States of America. Because you know how dangerous it is when people start pointing those things around"




The fiasco in Ferguson shows why you don't give military equipment to cops


You have a right to record the police
The Militarization of U.S. Police: Finally Dragged Into the Light by the Horrors of Ferguson


 NYPD sends memo telling officers they're allowed to be photographed


Photos: Protests continue for fourth night in Ferguson


"The gentleman on the left has more personal body armor and weaponry than I did while invading Iraq"


Ferguson or Iraq? Photos Unmask the Militarization of America's Police


"During the Obama administration, according to Pentagon data, police departments have received tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft"


How the Post-Dispatch’s photo staff is covering Ferguson






Related:   FREEDOM OF THE PRESS?


                "Is there too much press freedom? Ask 72 dead journalists"


                 "unprecedented rise in the number of journalists killed and imprisoned in the past year"


                 Comprehensive investigation of threats to press freedoms under the Obama administration

STEVE SCHAPIRO: "The Photo That Made Me"

The Bean Pickers, Arkansas, 1961

TIME LightBox talks to Steve Schapiro as part of the series ‘The Photo That Made Me,’ in which photographers tell us about the one photograph they made that they believe jump-started their career, garnered them international attention, or simply sparked an interest in photography.


Related: Steve Schapiro: Once Upon Upon A Time In America exhibition continues through September 21, 2014

CBS News: 50 Years Later, Civil Rights

A half-century after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the landmark Civil Rights Act, CBS News' Bob Schieffer hosted a symposium on Americans' historic fight against segregation, and the continuing struggle for equal rights for all. In this preview, the tumultuous summer of 1964 is reviewed, when three civil rights workers went missing. It also explores the impact of the civil rights movement through first-hand accounts of the activists and public figures who continue to fight for social justice today

"CBS News: 50 Years Later, Civil Rights," moderated by Bob Schieffer features civil rights activist Harry Belafonte, U.S. Rep. John Lewis, actress Whoopi Goldberg and others. Watch the full symposium here, and more here.

Stephen Wilkes: The Eiffel Tower, Paris, Day To Night

 

 

Stephen Wilkes' newest addition to his Day To Night collection:

The Eiffel Tower.

 

 

 

Stephen Wilkes Day To Night in Time

 

Stephen Wilkes Day To Night on CBS Sunday Morning

 

 

 

 

 

 



FREEDOM SUMMER

 

 

 

 

 

In the hot and deadly summer of 1964, the nation’s eyes were riveted on Mississippi.

 

 



Over ten memorable weeks known as Freedom Summer, more than 700 student volunteers joined with organizers and local African Americans in an historic effort to shatter the foundations of white supremacy in Mississippi, the nation’s most segregated state. The summer was marked by sustained and deadly violence, including the notorious murders of three civil rights workers, countless beatings, the burning of thirty-five churches, and the bombing of seventy homes and community centers.

In the face of this violence, these organizers, volunteers, and Mississippians worked together to canvass for voter registration, create Freedom Schools, and establish an alternative challenge to the State Democratic Party — the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Borne of Freedom Summer, and in response to the challenges of registering voters directly within hostile Mississippi, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party registered its own voters outside of the discriminatory system, ultimately sending a delegation of 68 members to attend the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City to confront and unseat the all-white delegation.

Directed by award-winning documentary filmmaker and MacArthur "Genius" Fellow Stanley Nelson (Freedom Riders, The Murder of Emmett Till), FREEDOM SUMMER highlights an overlooked but essential element of the Civil Rights Movement: the patient and long-term efforts by both outside activists and local citizens in Mississippi to organize communities and register black voters — even in the face of intimidation, physical violence and death. The Freedom Summer story reminds us that the movement that ended segregation was far more complex than most of us know.

American Experience will broadcast the film this summer, which marks both the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer and the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court's Shelby County v. Holder decision, which struck down key protections afforded by the landmark civil rights legislation borne of the political momentum generated by this historical movement — The Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Join  the Bronx Documentary Center this Saturday, July 12, at 8:15 PM for Freedom Summer
Film by Emmy award-winner Stanley Nelson followed by panel discussion with veterans of the 1964 Freedom Rides. The event is part of the Bronx Documentary Center’s summer exhibition and program series, The 60s: Decade of Change.

Watch online via PBS here.

Related: June 21, 1964: The Murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner