American Photography: A Century of Images – Part 2 (1999) The Photographic Age 1935–1959
one of the things that happens throughout this
century is that people are beginning to depend more and more on visual sources I don't know that
many people thought about it a lot but photographs are coming more and more into their lives so it
became a language that everybody knew they could [Music] speak photographic images um changed I
think changed everybody's understanding about you know not only what the world looked like
but what news was photography has a certain selective nature that will take an instant
and maybe lifted up out of the ordinary and therefore make bumps in history that you
wouldn't find there if it were not for [Music] photography that moment in time when
that Spanish uh uh Civil War uh Soldier is shot and bents back can you ever erase that image from
your mind can anyone ever say all right I saw it I don't have to see it again I don't remember by
1930 people really think that the photograph is the most trustworthy um source of information it's
the it's the thing they want most it's the thing they believe in most there's no question that
most ordinary Americans have been socialized in a way that says that seeing is believing and the
photograph is the most accurate way to see see [Music] and now the latest Miracle of news Gathering
sending pictures by wire Has Lifted the curtain on a new era in news leaving Tokyo we're following
up on the tourist the Associated Press Rockefeller Center New York City each day thousands of
photographs come in from around the world they arrive via telephone line and satellite
link minutes after they are taken in the field coverage continuing from here they're selected
and distributed to news organizations around the [Music] world if news happens anywhere on
Earth we'll soon see a picture of it the notion that everyone or that many people see the same
picture simultaneously is a pure 20th century experience never did you have millions of people
waking up and seeing the same pictures and seeing the same events pictured it never happened news
is of today and it's what happened today and so the pictures also had to be of what happened today
and if the pictures lag Behind the Story by any significant amount of time the story is over and
done with in the 1930s the daily paper was still the way most Americans got the news Visionaries
at the Associated Press decided that a process must be invented to transmit pictures as quickly
as words the system required a network of High Fidelity telephone lines and would be extremely
expensive newspaper owners who were being asked to pay the bill were skeptical Roy Howard Head of
the scrips Howard newspaper chain was convinced the whole thing was a big mistake there aren't
enough important pictures taken in the entire world he said to justify the expense but on
January 1st 1935 groups of technicians huddled around black machines across the country the first
transmission a dramatic photo of a plane crash the still wet print was wrapped around the cylinder
the rotating drum converted the photograph's black and white tones into a wavering high-pitched sound
in 25 cities across the country 25 cylinders were rotating simultaneously while recording the image
on a photographic [Music] plate and the day after the first wire photo was sent was the opening of
the Lindberg murder kidnap trial uh Bruno halman going on trial in New Jersey that story uh pretty
much sealed uh uh the success of the wire photo because it became clear that yes there were a lot
of interesting pictures out there in the following months Sensational news pictures flew back and
forth across the country Amelia aart Landing in California after flying non-stop from Honolulu
gmen shooting M Barker in a furious gunfight in Florida Will Rogers the folksy philosopher killed
in an airplane crash in Alaska from this time on big events no matter where in the world they
occurred would be pictured on the front page of everyone's newspaper on the same day the
whole Advent of wire journalism both stories and pictures tended to make the us more more of
a one Community as opposed to a more regionalized nation which it was at that time in 1937
the entire country was riveted by a huge news story a story that Americans could witness
almost instantly because of wire photo Mor Becca who was our chief Atara happened to be out at
Lakehurst when this Hindenburg was coming in and uh most photographers waited in in the
waiting room because the Hindenburg had been in before and it was just another picture
the hindur coming down and we had plenty of pictures but anyway he decided put up the
camera as it was coming in just he held up the camera it exploded he hit the trigger he had
the first puff of explosion on the Hindenberg Murray Becker was using a speed graphic now a
speed graphic is a large camera that held with two hands and the way it operates is this you
put a holder in to the camera full of film you take out a slide that exposes the film to the
shutter you put the slide on the back of the camera you [ __ ] the shutter and you make
the picture now you have to take the slide back out you have to put it in the holder you
take out the holder you turn the holder over because it's a film on the other side you put
it in the camera you pull the slide you put it in the back you [ __ ] the shutter and you
make the picture the Hindenburg burned in 47 second and Murray did that three times so there
was this incident of explosion which Murray photographed and then as the Hindenberg burned
in those few seconds he made two more pictures a remarkable piece of camera work terrible this is
one of the worst catastrophes in the world Place old 4 500 ft into the sky and it it's a terrific
TR ladies and gentlemen this spoke of this place now and the FL ring to the ground not t to the
boring [Music] the day the Hindenburg went down the image eclipsed the words from then on it
wasn't really news if you didn't have a picture [Music] n [Music] [Music] as much as you want to see pictures about nice
things people want to see pictures of horrible things people want to see the explosion people
want to see the murder people want to see the Carnage people want to see death people want to
see all the things in pictures that are too scary in life to deal [Music] with and that's one of the
things that makes it so impossible to understand the importance of Photography because you it
lets you see everything and lets you think about [Music] everything on November 23rd 1936 a new
magazine appeared on the news stands publisher Henry loose gave Americans something they
had never seen before a glossy large format news magazine which used photographs to tell its
stories never want to think small loose called the magazine quite simply life it was the biggest
Mass Market hit in the history of publishing going back to Gutenberg nothing that ever had been
published was as big an immediate sellout and it just it just took over why because it spoke
in a language that everybody could understand [Applause] pictures it is very hard I mean
we're so inundated with images now that it is almost impossible to comprehend how little
of that existed when when life came out there maybe be a picture on the front page of the
newspaper a few magazines would run pictures nothing arrived in your home and opened up the
world to you this is precisely what life did the success of Life the impact it had I'm sure
surprised the absolute hell out of the people who launched it I mean I think loose knew he
was on to something Henry loose always had a fascination with what he called picture magic
to introduce his new magazine to the world he wrote an essay which describe the many powers
of Photography to see life to see the world to watch the faces of the poor and the gestures of
The Proud to see strange things machines armies multitudes and shadows in the jungle to see and
take pleasure in seeing to see and be instructed to see and be amazed you turn the pages of Life
magazine and there's politics and there's fashion and there's movies and there's advertising and
there's cars and there's food and there's homes and there's tragedy and there's happiness and
if you think about what that was like in 1936 during the Depression as people are just trying
to understand what's going on in this country it's amazing life perfected the for format of
the photo essay the photographs selected and arranged on the page would tell the story with a
beginning a middle and an [Music] end when you're finished with that photo essay you should pretty
much know what that story is All About without even having read a word in a text piece or a
caption there was the career girl Leonard mom's Career Girl people hadn't seen stories like that
actually published pictures of people's ordinary lives one of the reasons I think that that
people get hooked on life is the sense that they are bringing these extraordinary images to
any American citizen any given American no matter where he or she lived no matter what their class
was no matter what they did for a living they all could essentially share in this experience
and that experience of course is defined by still photographs life told us about a world
that many of us didn't have I grew up in in in the Italian section of Brooklyn I I did not
speak English until I went to school a magazine like Life Magazine which somehow came into this
Italian household I don't know why but I guess someone said I think we should learn how to
be Americans and Life Magazine was was this great great lesson about what the other world
the outside world was all [Music] about you know it's so amazing I can't remember what I ate
this afternoon I can remember what I saw in Life magazine in a special feature life printed
snapshots of Marian Chadwick and her father at the beach one photograph a year for over a
quarter of a century [Music] [Applause] [Music] a Great Depression in Washington Roosevelt
attempted to deal with the economic crisis proposing a multitude of new government programs
he knew he would need the support of Congress and the general public as part of the farm Security
Administration the government established an organization unique in peacetime a propaganda
agency that would use the power of photographs to sell Roosevelt's programs Roy Striker an economist
from Columbia University was chosen to run this new agency Roy Striker never took a picture
in his life but he was a great talent scout and he brought together a team of photographers
some of whom have become Legends in the history of photography like Dorothy Al Arthur rosin and
Russell Lee and Walker Evans Striker was dedicated to telling the story of America the way it was as
he put it uh our job was to introduce America to Americans and through our mighty nation it
left the Dreadful track from Oklahoma City to the Arizon line dakot and nebras to
the L real grand it fell across our city I think what I photographs that I did for f
security and what we all did I think uh is an expression of our feeling that we were living
in a great country but that the country was in great trouble and also that the people who were
most troubled in those those times were also the people who were part of its greatness it was a
politically naive period and all of us who went to Washington at that time had some crazy idea
that what we could do could alter the course of history I've read any number of times about
how there was dust in the food and dust on the table and dust in the bed and in the clothes but
until you actually see a good photograph such as roin of the uh people walking from the
house to the dust Cellar you don't get a sense of the immensity of the occurrence
somehow the photograph sums this all up in a different way you get a a sense of it
that's uh sort of visceral instead of just intellectual over 6 years FSA photographers
took a quarter of a million photographs they were made available free of charge and were
widely used in newspapers magazines exhibits and books at the time the pictures helped sell
Roosevelt's programs but for later generations they have become a national treasure Frozen in
this archive is a critical moment of American history today when we think of the depression
we see these faces the suffering and the sadness as well as their implicit message
as bad as things were America would [Music] endure in the early 1940s a young photographer
Gordon Parks got a call to come to Washington with the success of the FSA its role was being
expanded Roy Striker believed that photographs could be used to combat racial discrimination he
began by showing Parks how things really worked on the streets of the nation's capital so Roy Striker
asked me a few questions and said what do you know you know about this city and I told him he said he
said well I'm going to give you an assignment your first assignment put your camera on the Shelf
I want you to go to Julius garfinkle Store buy your yourself a top coat there's a restaurant
directly across the street and then there's a motion picture house down this in the same block
so to make the story short each one of them gave me short shrift uh uh I didn't get a code at the
department store when I went to the restaurant man said don't you know Negroes have to eat in the
on the other side the back you can't come in this side you have to get your food at the back and of
course I didn't even get in the movie house that's the way it was so I was astounded and I went back
and Roy saw me walk in and he smiled he said well how did it go I said well I think you know how
it went he said yeah what you going to do about it I said I don't know what do I do about it he
said well what' you bring your camera down here for just like that I said oh so he left and the
only person who left in the building was a black woman a char woman was sweeping the floor and
mopping so I introduced myself she told me her name was Ella Watson and I asked her if I could
photograph her photograph me like this I said yes I had really thought of Grant Wood's picture
of the American Gothic I put a broom in one hand and a mop in the other and told her look directly
into the camera well that picture has become bestn picture of all of my work I showed it to Striker
three mons later he said well you're getting the idea but you're going to get us all fired said
this is the government agency and that picture is an indictment against America I realized uh from
the reactions people that the camera could be very powerful instrument against discrimination
against poverty Against Racism [Music] [Music] he was um filled with this idea of photography
of natural spaces being very much linked with um an American Vision the landscape in America
has a has a great um history and Legacy to it um it was our Cathedrals um it was our castles
um in response to a European idea of what art should be about something spiritual
something lofty something historical our history was in our waterfalls and
our mountains and our Great [Music] Rivers people I think misunderstand uh Adams
because he photographed mountains and people so people think it's about uh geography
or geology but he really was photographing the weather he uh he made pictures unlike
anybody else had made or for that matter has made when Adams was doing his best work everyone
thought it was irrelevant beautiful pictures of little uh pristine little lakes and the
high sieras what did that mean during the uh during the Great Depression during the uh
during the second war it really seemed like escapism then uh later after the world
became uh concerned with ecological issues and when it began to seem to people that the
preservation of our place was as important as Central an issue as as any then Adams began
to seem very relevant very prophetic [Music] in the early 1940s the photograph had completed
its conquest of America after the success of Life the news stands were overflowing with picture
magazines wire Services were now sending pictures instantly around the world not only on telephone
lines but via radio waves 35mm cameras and fast lenses made it possible to capture life in action
with these Technical Innovations photography had immense power to shape public opinion all
this potential came together on December 7th [Music] 1941 the war would be fought on many
fronts an astounding Global story which both the military and the Press were determined
to record in pictures Life magazine and former FSA photographers were rushed to
the front lines it soon became a tragedy of unimaginable proportions but ironically
World War II was a photographer's dream military cameramen moved in as always with
the troop to bring home the pictured facts the hell of jungle warfare the dawn
of Landing day on some Coral Beach [Music] public opinion wins Wars wrote General Eisenhower
the double face of nipon showed itself in its to win World War II it wasn't enough to tell the
American public what they were fighting for it was necessary to drive home what they
were fighting against the Japanese with their unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor were
singled out as objects of particular hatred well the Japanese soon became Japs not just in
life but uh in the in the press in general um the worst most tragic thing that happened was the
uh the evacuation of what eventually became about 100,000 Japanese American residents of the West
Coast to the in interior there was racism both conscious and unconscious in the treatment of of
the Japanese if you can understand that then you can understand the dimension of the war that
seldom surfaces today the kind of intense hatred that was necessary to fight it to Modern Eyes of
all the many pictures coming out of World War II this is one of the strangest and most telling Life
Magazine printed it as their picture of the week with the following caption when he said goodbye
to Natalie Nickerson her handsome Navy Lieutenant promised her a [ __ ] she was his girlfriend
apparently and a very respectable girl who went to church and led her high school class and that sort
of thing and here she was present at this bizarre and gruesome exhibit of this Japanese soldier
skull well that sort of thing is commonplace and so it became a real service problems what to
do with these these cleansed bones of for former Japanese soldiers that were being sent home as
gifts and souvenirs but my point is that it's never happened with the German corpses they were
never boiled down to get their bones to send home never the Germans were white people I think this
ought to be talked about in exactly those terms because it's been forgotten we didn't lock up
people with German names we locked up people with Japanese names although they were American
citizens they were very close to it seemed to what used to be called [ __ ] in this country and that
should never be forgotten either and the fact that they were not white suggested a very special brand
of alien uh offensiveness and consequently to to uh take the flesh off their dead bones and mail
those bones home as nice souvenirs for the people in Iowa and so on didn't bother people at all they
thought it quite appropriate you can learn a lot about Americans in the second world war from that
one photograph I would say World War II produced many famous photographs but one of the most famous
was not of guns or tanks but of a young woman's back her name was Betty gyel and at the height of
the war 50,000 servicemen a month were asking for this picture 20th Century Fox made a movie to
capitalize on the fame of the photograph love Lori Lori they called it pinup girl that's all
with high heels her bathing suit and her big come hither smile Betty grable's photograph was
everywhere a fighter plane was named pinup girl and had her picture painted on its fuselage she
built herself as the daughter of a truck driver and took her role as icon seriously I've got to
be an listed man's girl she said just like this has got to be an enlisted man's [Music] War do
I love my pinup the war created a fad for Pinups of all kinds on baric walls in decals in solders
wallets Life Magazine published a set of pictures of beautiful women and then conducted a poll among
the troops which one of these girls would you most like to have pneumonia with the girl you'd most
like to bail out with the girl you'd most like to take out for a chicken dinner an army publication
put it simply we're not only fighting for the Four Freedoms we're fighting for the Priceless
privilege of making love to American women so baby keep a grinning remember I'm pinning my
hopes on [Music] you this is the day for which fre people long have waited this is dday for years
it had been in the planning the return of Allied Forces to France the ultimate crushing of Germany
and the end of the war in Europe every magazine and newspaper editor in the country knew that
D-Day would be their biggest story Life Magazine sent John Morris to London In late 1943 his
instructions were simple get us the first pair pictures of the invasion by June 1944 I had a
team of six War correspondent photographers and my job was to get them assigned to various spots for
the great story of the invasion which involved a million men to cover the actual Landing Morris
sent Robert Kappa Kappa had photographed the Spanish Civil War the desert battle across
North Africa and the invasion of Italy if anyone could capture the events of
D-Day on film it would be Robert Kappa [Music] when ca's film came in we were desperate
because we had to make a a final deadline of 9:00 a.m.
Uh Thursday morning for shipment to
to life up until that moment the whole world had didn't know what D-Day actually looked like so
we were we were really pressed for time Papas f came in came to me in the early evening with a
note from him saying John the action is all in these four roles of 35mm film and I ordered
the dark room to rush processing as fast as possible I said give me contact prints I
needed to edit and the young lad in the dark room uh put the film in a drawing cabinet
and closed the doors and there was too much heat and because I we were in such a hurry the
films were were ruined and on three rows of the four there was no image discernable
at all but on the fourth row fortunately I found 11 frames that could be printed and
those are the pictures will live forever [Music] There She Goes one of the great photo icons of all time
possibly the greatest is a picture that Joe Rosena made of the flag raising on uima
on top of Mount saachi it had been a bloody bloody course and in Along Comes this picture
that says Victory the night it was made was flowing to Guam and the next day it was
transmitted to the US so it was in the US within a day and a half of the time it
was made and transmitted to newspapers and the picture was played on the front
pages everywhere and it became an instant icon that photograph is especially interesting I
think because it could be said to Mark the impact of the New Deal upon the way we understood
the war we understood the war as an almost Magical Force for uniting people in this
country and for effacing differences and that is what that photograph taken just as a
piece of symbolism is about one picture and in that brief moment rosenthal's camera
seemed to capture the soul of a Nation [Music] [Applause] there are certain pictures that
change our lives now I don't mean pictures of events that change our
lives but I mean pictures themselves that changed our lives and the oswit and
other concentration can photos are in that category people had read descriptions of the
concentration camps but they seemed exaggerated unbelievable eyewitnesses had been
met with suspicion the possibility that a whole people had been exterminated was Unthinkable and then these imag visual proof of the enormity of the Nazi crimes
even Margaret Burke white the experienced combat photographer could not fathom what she was seeing
using the camera was almost a relief she wrote it interposed a slight barrier between myself and the
white Horror in front of me I kept telling myself that I'd believe it when I had a chance to look
at my own photographs but later when I developed up the negatives I could not bring myself to look
at the films like the Holocaust they documented the photographs Mark a turning point in human
consciousness the world would never be the same [Music] the [Music] on January 24th 1955 the Museum of Modern Art in
New York City presented an exhibition called the family of man organized by photographer Edward
styken it was a fusion of carefully selected photographs and captions all to support
the concept mankind is one it included 500 photographs from 68 countries around the world it
featured groups of related pictures that mov the viewer from images of lovers meeting to pictures
of marriage to birth and finally to Universal concerns of food and shelter for one thing it came
after this terrible War and the the aftermath of the war in which uh uh societies were were uh
really disrupted it made the point that people everywhere had the same needs and same desires
that families were families wherever they existed no matter what their surroundings looked like
it appeal to people on a just very human level [Music] critics attack the show as simplistic but
for the vast general public the exhibit was a profound Revelation it toured the country
and then the world bringing many people into museums for the first time in their lives
a book was published based on the exhibit and it brought the pictures to Millions
more in all the family of Man became the most widely seen collection
of images in the history of photography I don't remember when the family of
man came into my Consciousness uh but its effect on me was extraordinary it was a collection of the
single most powerful images that I had ever seen certainly to that date and probably ever have seen
together these extraordinary pictures celebrated a humanism a saying that all people were alike
Under the Skin but yet in their differences they expressed the beauty of what it is to be
[Music] human the couple making love obviously in the middle of sex alth all you see are the
shoulders was what I hoped passion would be the father teaching the son how to hunt in beuan land
was something about fatherhood something about what I wanted to be as a father but then there
were photographs that just to me said said things that were so big about the world I mean the the C
Bron photographs of the especially the one of the women looking off off across the field of stones
in Kashmir the dwaso picture of the lovers by the S they were icons they stood for meaning that
kept building and building and building and it told us that the human heart was beautiful and the
human heart was shared by everyone who was human [Music] [Laughter] [Music] and years ago
I watched uh my wife going through the the New York Times uh magazine section and she was
turning like this really fast really fast and she finally stopped at what I thought was
the worst ad I've ever seen the headline was just dismal it said nothing uh the layout
was really bad and I said why did you stop at that ad and she said I like that dress very
nice picture of a dress I like the dress I think that our sense of our clothing at all
times is essentially pictorial groups of people in 1863 caught by the camera show these these
people looking like bundles of laundry I think in order to look better in the camera eye a kind of
self-contained slim unit has come into existence you have to really be quite slender to
be perfect in the camera what the camera influences right there is the way people wish to look after the war going through the pages
of Vogue or Harper's Bazaar looking at Penn's photographs later at Avon's photographs
what these photographs did was create a way we wanted to look it permeated all aspects
of um ourselves certainly ourselves as women in the world and you had desirable uh people's
looks seen through the camera in those clothes that looked marvelous under the camera eye
there is no nothing the camera cannot make marvelous let's say it's a dress put it on the
model and it's still that's okay but it's a dress and then somebody pins it up in the back and pins
it up on the side and it's still a dress and then a photographer an abidon uh takes a photograph
and it's something that everyone wants it's this beautiful incredible dress and then what happens
is they go to the store but it never looks like the photograph nothing really ever looks like the
photograph and that's the sad part of life [Music] setting up the family slide projector is
a ritual that's virtually disappeared but it's one that I recall with great clarity and
affection from my childhood while my father's sophisticated knowledge of Photography
made our family somewhat unique in many other ways we were typical we loved making
photographs of the markers of life [Music] often these pictures were made on family
vacations when we like millions of other Americans stuff the family into the
station wagon and headed out onto the open road one might have the impression of looking at
scores of these pictures that we moved around in a kind of Clump never more than perhaps
an arms length apart I think the pictures represent a kind of tenacity on the part
of my parents to maintain a kind of ideal image or ideal appearance of family closeness in
spite of whatever battles might have been going on in the backseat of the car 2 minutes before
the photographs were [Music] made one of the most interesting things that in a sense plays itself
out in these pictures is the idea of connecting the older mythologies of American culture to
what you might think of as the future mythologies of American culture especially the growing
mythology of the ideal family in America in the [Music] [Applause] [Music] 50s in the boom of the 1950s
Americans were being inundated with images although television was
becoming America's favorite p time photography was still King magazines were
everywhere life and look had more readers than ever the pictures in both the ads and the
story showed a Brave New World of suburbs cake mixes Polaroid cameras krinolin and
cars with fins Life Magazine movies and soon television create a photographic world of
possibilities that nobody could have dreamed of years earlier and all of a sudden you start to get
after the war a different kind of visual universe that that magazine says it's reporting
on but it's creating it's helping create it at the time people believed in it so strongly
that people getting Life Magazine looking at pictures of those families would go through
oh M that you know maybe we should redecorate our living room like that or what can we do
to look more like this family the vision of America and the the VIS of the good life that's
presented in magazines like life and look um is extremely narrow extremely circumscribed in
terms of who's being uh pictured it's clearly middle class it's clearly white it clearly has
a husband and wife who accept that that the man is out in the public world the wife is home
she's a mother she's taking care of the whole domestic sphere a very clear narrow uh tightly
defined vision of of of what it is to be normal we could look back at the 50s and say God Those
ads really distort and how could people have wanted to feel like the people in Those ads but
today we'll have something like a Calvin Klein ad all right now we have the sexy mother who looks
beautiful with the children on the beach which I can tell you never has happened and we look at
that and we say that's true and I want to have a white sweater like that while I'm on the beach
with my children and everything stays White and the waves come up and we all look relaxed together
and nobody's asking me for lemonade or where the juice pack [Music] is away Hallelujah come on
get happy get ready for the Judgment Day sun is [Music] shining the iconography of the the
1950s the official iconography of course has become you know the largest cliche of the latter
half of the 20th century that uh everything really really domesticated you you know absolutely
everything under control Conformity blah blah blah things weren't actually that way out in
the streets get ready but the judgement day [Applause] [Music] in the mid 1950s a new generation
of photographers led by Robert Frank and William kleene rejected the perfect lighting
and composition of professional picture taking William Klein described his excitement in first
seeing not the order but the chaos of Life while looking through his viewfinder I rushed out
into the street he said and shot away aiming not aiming it didn't matter I wanted it all all in
a gluttonous rage gone was the comfortable middle class World Gone was the neat magazine photo
Essay with its beginning and middle and end this photography is about this mess of misconnections
and people uncertain of where they're going and uh and people colliding and cultures colliding and
people not seeing each other it represents this very very different development in photography
and and um there's sort of no turning back from that these photographers said here's your
world this is this is your world this is not the fantasy of it this is this is the real
world and made pictures that were graphic and iconic and could both tell the truth about what
was what they were seeing and stand for something big the best photographers showed that in this
vast country there are many lost souls that not everybody fits in and that the one American dream
is not a one-size fits [Music] [Applause] [Music] all in August 1955 a 14-year-old boy
visiting Mississippi from Chicago was accused of whistling Ling at a white woman he
was bludgeon to death and his body was thrown into a nearby River in a South where violent
racism was commonplace emit Till's murder may have gone unnoticed except for this Photograph
published only in the black press it showed his young face beaten beyond recognition it was um
awful aw awful it was horrific he looked like an old man I would go to bed every night
frightened to death literally frightened to death because we were the same age as he
and we didn't know whether or not they would come and get us and we also saw pictures in
the newspapers of and especially of in in the Chicago defendant Pittsburgh Courier of the the
uh asants uh in the classroom in the courtroom laughing a picture is worth a thousand words
they're seared in your brain yeah and and they remain there and im's face is still in my mind
today I can see it is there and it will never leave I think my generation of black
southerners who became active in the civil rights movement in the late 50s early
60s was the emit till generation because down to the person all my friends saw that picture
at about the same age as I or a year or two older and they were enraged and power felt
powerless at the same time and vowed as I did that one day they were going to get even
they were going to do something about it photography was growing up with a century in
the coming years it would confront the television age and soon the digital age every aspect of
American life was about to go through profound changes the camera would be there to document
to shock to motivate and to transform [Music]
