Jill Freedman “Resurrection City”

Steven Kasher Gallery

[Image: "Poor Peoples Campaign, Washington, D.C., 1968" Vintage gelatin silver print, printed (ca. 1968) Jill Freedman: Resurrection City, 1968]

This event has ended.

Steven Kasher Gallery presents Jill Freedman: Resurrection City, 1968. The exhibition features over 70 black and white vintage prints of photographs made by Jill Freedman in the protest camp built on the Washington Mall as the culmination of the Poor People’s Campaign. Freedman’s sustained pictorial effort is one of the lasting achievements of photography as social protest in America. This work was published in book form in 1971, but has never been exhibited previously. This exhibition coincides with the release of a new book, Jill Freedman: Resurrection City, 1968, published by Damiani, and marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I knew I had to shoot the Poor People’s Campaign when the murdered Martin Luther King, Jr. I had to see what was happening, to record it and be a part of it, I felt so bad. Besides, it sounded too good to miss…. Always have been poor people, still are, always will be. Because governments are run by ambitious men with of no imagination. Whose priorities are so twisted that they burn food while people starve. And we let them. So that history doesn’t change much but the names.
– Jill Freedman, 1971