John Edwin Mason: Documentary, Motorsports, Photo History

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 →

LaToya Ruby Fazier: A MacArthur "Genius" Award and a Thank-You to Gordon Parks

I've never met a genius. I've spent the last 25 years teaching in major research universities. Before that I went to an awfully good grad school, and I'd still be hard pressed to say that I've met anyone that I'd call a genius -- somebody, that is, with the dazzling,... Read more →

Updates (Finally!): Margaret Bourke-White, Gordon Parks, Kamoinge, & En Foco

It's been a long time -- too long a time -- since I updated this blog. And I'm pretty sure that my regular readers (all three or four of them) have departed for more entertaining pastures. To them I say, please come back. Why have I been so silent? In... Read more →

"Wow, Quel Babes!": Gordon Parks & American Teens in Paris, 1952

Gordon Parks was a serious man. His claim to fame as a photographer rests on the searing photo-essays that he produced for Life magazine on issues such as poverty and racial justice. But he had a lighter side, and he revealed it, from time to time, to Life's readers. Today... Read more →

Gordon Parks & Flavio da Silva: Rio de Janeiro, 1961

Once in a long while, photographers have assignments that follow them -- and sometimes haunt them -- for the rest of their lives. Gordon Parks, one of the twentieth century's greatest photo-essayists, produced at least two of these stories. One involved the Fontenelles, an impoverished family in New York's Harlem.... Read more →