John Edwin Mason: Documentary, Motorsports, Photo History

Henry Martin, the Clan Barbecue, and the Power of Photography

It's an unsettling photograph. It is to me, at least, and I hope to everyone who sees "1908 and 1913 Clan Barbecue" in 2023. But to be troubled by it, a viewer has to remember the historical context. A photographer from Charlottesville's Holsinger Studio made on June 19th, 1913, a time when racial oppression, Jim Crow segregation, and white supremacy were at their worst in Central Virginia. Read more →

Democracy Abroad, Jim Crow at Home: Charlottesville's Black Veterans of World War I

Race is complicated. And few aspects of race in America have been more conflicted than the relationship between white people and black veterans. At one extreme, black veterans have been lynched simply for daring to wear their uniforms in public. At the other, they've been held up as the finest representatives of their community. In Charlottesville, no African American veterans were lynched. But black men in uniform weren't always honored either. It's a story worth telling. Today, I'm going to tell it about World War I. Read more →

How Jill Freedman Illuminated the "Invisible Poor"

I've published an essay on Jill Freedman's magnificent new book, Resurrection City, 1968, over on the Time/Life website. The city -- a shantytown on the Mall in Washington, D.C. -- became the symbol of the Poor People's Campaign [PPC], Martin Luther's King's last crusade. Freedman joined the PPC and lived in Resurrection City from start to finish. Her photos are like no others from the campaign are like no others -- raw, powerful, unflinching, humane. Read more →

Jill Freedman: Resurrection City, 1968

The women and men of the Poor People's Campaign came to Washington, D.C., in the spring of 1968, by the thousand -- young and old, black and white, traveling in busses and cars and mule trains. Most were African Americans, but Latinos, whites, and members of half a dozen Native American nations were on hand as well. Virtually all of them were poor. Although Martin Luther King and the Southern Leadership Conference had summoned them to the nation's capital, the movement belonged to them. In New York City, a young photographer named Jill Freedman heard King's call -- and she answered. Her camera was in her hand. Read more →

LIFE Comes (Back) to Africa: Life Magazine and the Visual Representation of a Continent

On Monday, October 9th, I'm taking Life back to Africa. It's been away since 1972, when it went out of business. For the previous 36 years, however, it had been America's most important source of visual information about the world and that world most certainly included Africa -- for good... Read more →

Priya Ramrakha: Photographer, Pan-Africanist

One of the most significant photography exhibitions of the year -- Priya Ramrakha: A Pan-African Perspective, 1950-1968 -- opens on Thursday, October 5th, at the FADA Gallery, in Johannesburg, South Africa. It will add immensely to our understanding of African photography. The exhibition draws on his recently rediscovered archive and brings the work of this pioneering African photojournalist to the public for the first time since his death in 1968. Read more →

We the People: Looking at the Way We Live Now

I'm happy to announce that several of my photographs are included in We The People, an exhibition of documentary and portrait photography at the University of Virginia's Arthur J. Morris Law Library that will be on view until June 2018. The exhibit showcases the work of 15 photographers who explore... Read more →