“Heavyweight contender Muhammad Ali getting his poetic mouth taped by trainer Angelo Dundee during his weigh-in before the big fight with Doug Jones,” NY, NY. 1962. Photograph by George Silk. © Time Inc. Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery.

The year 1963 is the subject of a new exhibition of photos at the Howard Greenberg Gallery.  It was a watershed time in American political and social history:  civil rights protests, the start of Beatlemania,  deepening involvement in Vietnam, the hope and promise inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr.‘s “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, D.C. followed by the shock of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

The exhibition “1963″ brings together 40 photographs from both renowned photojournalists like Carl Mydans, George Silk and John Loengard to anonymous photographers who captured famous figures and events before and after the transformational year 1963. The exhibition runs  through July 6, 2013; an opening reception will be held on this evening, May 9, from 6 to 8 p.m.
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Provoke No. 2., 1969  All Images © Daido Moriyama, courtesy of the Steven Kasher Gallery.

Steven Kasher Gallery is presenting an exhibition of new and classic photographs by the important Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama. This is the largest and most comprehensive exhibition of Moriyama’s work ever mounted in an American art gallery. Daido Moriyama: Now and Now will be on view from March 28^th through May 4th, 2013. Steven Kasher Gallery is located at 521 W. 23rd St., New York, NY 10011. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11am to 6pm.

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© Anderson Scott

In the make-believe world of Civil War reenactors, earnest nostalgia can bump up against reality, and Atlanta photographer Anderson Scott has an eye for the humorous, ironic and sometimes disturbing consequences. Having grown up in Montgomery, Alabama, he explains, “I knew lots of people who obsessed about the Civil War. It seemed like an odd-but-harmless hobby, sort of like collecting toy trains. I did not think too much about it.

“Many years later, I stumbled onto a Civil War reenactment. What I found was a group of people living in a more or less (often less) accurate facsimile of life on the march during the Civil War. The reenactors were in period dress, which was striking and made for interesting photographs. But more than that, I got the sense that some of these people were frighteningly serious about their alternate reality–by which I mean that the reenactment included some people who thought the world would be a better place had the South won, with all that that entails, including slavery. I decided I wanted to know more.”

Scott began to photograph Civil War reenactments and neo-Confederate events in Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Florida and the Carolinas. The project has just been published as a book titled Whistling Dixie from Columbia College Chicago Press. More images from the project can viewed at Scott’s website. (more…)

©Bob Adelman, Selma, Alabama, 1965

As a form of propaganda, activist photography tends not to stand the test of time. But among the many striking and even iconic images of the Civil Rights Movement were images shot by photographers who were working from within, particularly as members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Some of their images endure for the formal beauty and raw emotion–not to mention the undeniable and systematic injustice–that they portray. University Press of Mississippi has just published 156 photographs by nine photographers in This Light of Ours: Activist Photographers of the Civil Rights Movement. “Together the photographs and text remind us that the movement was a battleground, that the battle was successfully fought by thousands of ‘ordinary’ Americans…and that the Movement’s moral vision and impact continue to shape our lives,” the publisher says. Images by Bob Adelman, who went on to a successful career as a photojournalist, stand out in particular. Also included in the book are some noteworthy images by George Ballis, Bob Fitch, Bob Fletcher, Matt Herron, David Prince, Herbert Randall, Maria Varela and Tamio Wakayama. with personal accounts of covering the Civil Rights movement by several of the photographers. (more…)

©Estate of Leonard Freed–Magnum Photos (Brigitte Freed)

Commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1963 civil rights march on Washington, late Magnum photographer Leonard Freed’s coverage of the event will be released in book form for the first time in This Is the Day: The March on Washington (Getty Publications, February 2013). The march featured Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech and helped pave the way for the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Freed’s moving photographs of the day are accompanied in the book by a first-hand account of the event by civil rights activist and author Julian Bond.  The book will have its official launch February 5 (today) at Center for the Book at the Library of Congress, West Dining Room, Sixth Floor, Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave., S.E., Washington, D.C. Michael Eric Dyson and Paul Farber, who both contributed essays to the book, with join along with Freed’s widow, Brigitte Freed, for a conversation about the book and the legacy of the march.
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