Did the Iconic Civil Rights Era Photographs Do More Harm than Good?

Now the stuff of history books, the iconic photographs of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States were once front-page news: snarling dogs, baton-wielding police, high-pressure fire hoses, and more used to keep African-American men, women, and children from realizing the promise of the American dream. White Northerners saw such images and pushed for legislation such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to aid African Americans, bringing to an end that sad chapter of American history. Or so the story goes. In Seeing through Race: A Reinterpretation of Civil Rights Photography, Martin A. Berger argues that the story in the history books isn’t true. Instead, Berger believes, those images portrayed African-Americans as weak and incapable of saving themselves—a portrayal that continues to prevent true equality and plagues race relations to this day. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Did the Iconic Civil Rights Era Photographs Do More Harm than Good?"

[Image: Jack Thornell. James Meredith, wounded by a shotgun blast, sprawled on a highway near Hernando, Mississippi, June 6, 1966.]

[Many thanks to the University of California Press for providing me with a review copy of Martin A. Berger’s Seeing through Race: A Reinterpretation of Civil Rights Photography.]

Julius Shulman’s Los Angeles Love Story

From neon-lit “La-La Land” to dark, gritty L.A. Confidential and L.A. Noire, the city of angels—Los Angeles—has occupied a place in the public’s imagination in many forms. In Julius Shulman Los Angeles: The Birth of a Modern Metropolis by Sam Lubell and Douglas Woods, we see through the eyes of a true lover of the city. “My father Julius Shulman grew up with Los Angeles,” Judy McKee, Shulman’s daughter, suggests in her tender foreword. In a stunning array of black and white as well as color photographs, Julius Shulman Los Angeles tells a love story between a talented photographer and his home city, the “girl next door” that became the love of his life and to whom he devoted his talents. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Julius Shulman’s Los Angeles Love Story."

[Image: © Craig Krull Gallery, Santa Monica, Julius Shulman Los Angeles: The Birth of a Modern Metropolis by Sam Lubell and Douglas Woods, Rizzoli New York, 2011. Richard Neutra’s Kuhn House, 1936; Shulman’s first photograph of modern architecture.]

[Many thanks to Rizzoli for providing me with the image above from and a review copy of Julius Shulman Los Angeles: The Birth of a Modern Metropolis by Sam Lubell and Douglas Woods.]