UpDate - Vol. 14, No. 22, Page 6
March 2, 1995
On exhibit; Photos document 15-year civil rights movement

     The acclaimed photo-documentary exhibition, "Appeal to This Age:
Photography of the Civil Rights Movement,at the University Gallery
from March 8 through April 10.
     Organized by curator Steven Kasher and the Howard Greenberg
Gallery in New York City, the exhibition is circulated by the Howard
Greenberg Gallery.
     The show traces the 15-year span of the civil rights movement,
from its first major battle against segregation-the Montgomery bus
boycott-to its transformation after the assassination of Martin Luther
King Jr.
     This collection of powerful images includes such photos as 10-
year-old Linda Brown, whose father is named in the famous
desegregation case Brown vs. the Board of Education, walking through a
dangerous train yard to get to her all-black school; a young Martin
Luther King Jr. being arrested for loitering when he tried to enter a
Montgomery courtroom; marchers walking from Selma to Montgomery;
brutal police dogs baring their fangs at protesters; and firefighters
blasting water hoses at demonstrators.
     "For anyone who lived through the 1960s, photographs of the civil
rights struggle will always stir up deep feelings. That struggle
disrupted and changed a nation; those pictures helped sway the
public's mind," wrote Vicki Goldberg, who reviewed the exhibition for
The New York Times when it opened in New York last year.
     "The movement was instrumental in shattering the myth of
objectivity that had grown up around photojournalism. Reporters with
cameras prided themselves on being neutral and uninvolved, on telling
it like it was... but they gave up that pretense in the South, at least
in the early '60s," Goldberg wrote. "There is no mistaking Charles
Moore's outrage at seeing a black man with his trousers torn by one
police dog and menaced by another's bared fangs, or the fierce
criticism in Moore's image of a Mississippi police officer laughingly
demonstrating his billy club swing to a group of cronies who get the
joke. The press was drawn into the cause by its evident rightness."
     These are photographs that had "a great influence on their time.
Audiences, both mass and elite, were swayed to new beliefs and actions
by images they saw reproduced in their newspapers and magazines,"
Kasher writes in the exhibit catalog. "Accounts of the civil rights
movement are rich with stories about how a certain picture enlisted a
convert to the cause or turned a senator's vote or sickened a
president, goading him to new legislative initiative.
     "During this period, the weekly issue of Life was the single most
important organ of the media, reaching more than half of the adult
population and more Americans than any television program...," Kasher
said.
     "One of the reasons that images of the civil rights
confrontations worked so well to increase pressure on the government
was... that by the '60s, the news media were coming into its global
inheritance. Those pictures of dogs and fire hoses were published in
Europe, Africa, India, Japan. Photographs were especially powerful in
countries where large parts of the population could not read. The
Kennedy administration was extremely worried about damage to this
nation's image abroad," Goldberg noted in her review.

RELATED EVENTS
* Kasher, who spent more than a year coordinating this exhibition,
  will speak from 7-8 p.m., Wednesday, March 15, in Room 006 of the
  Willard Hall Education Building. His talk, free and open to the
  public, will be followed by a reception in the University Gallery.
* The Department of Art History will present an American art
  symposium, "The American Photograph as Social and Cultural
  Document," from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., Friday, March 31, in Clayton
  Hall.
    Symposium topics include abolitionists in American daguerreotypy,
  photographs of the Civil War and of native Americans, and the works
  of such photographers as John Hiller, Edward Steichen, Walker Evans
  and Paul Strand.
    Registration, due by March 21, is $35 per person and $15 for
  students. An additional $5 late fee will be charged for
  registrations received after that date.
    For more information, call the University's Department of Art
  History at 831-8415.
    The symposium is partly funded by the Delaware Humanities Forum, a
  state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and
  several University departments and programs.
* Showing concurrently with "Appeal To This Age" will be "In An Ideal
  Light: Images of Victorian Women," in the smaller wing of the
  University Gallery, from the University Gallery Collection of Works
  on Paper.

     The University Gallery is located on the second floor of Old
College. The Gallery hours are 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Mondays through
Fridays, and from 1-5 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays. The University
Gallery is wheelchair-accessible and individuals with special needs or
those wanting more information may call 831-8242.
     "Appeal to This Age" is made possible by the generous support of
the Howard Greenberg Gallery and in part by the University's Center
for Black Culture, the University departments of History, Art and
Political Science and International Relations, and the College of
Urban Affairs and Public Policy, the Black American Studies Program,
the Faculty Senate Committee on Cultural Activities and Public Events
and the Office of Affirmative Action and Multicultural Programs. All
gallery events are free and open to the public.
                                                          -Beth Thomas