nothin Lee Friedlander Captures The Conflict In… | New Haven Independent

Lee Friedlander Captures The Conflict In Civil Rights

Friedlander, Courtesy Eakins Press Foundation

Untitled, gelatin silver print.

It’s not just that we see what the photographer is seeing; the way the photograph is composed, we’re there, in his shoes. We’re in the midst of a crowd, people seated in rows of chairs. The women are all in dresses. The men are wearing suits. Most are wearing hats. Most of them seem to be paying attention to whatever’s in front of them.

But then, front and center in the photograph, is a kid in a Scout uniform. His arms are crossed. His brow is furrowed. His eyes pierce the camera’s lens.

What is he thinking?

The context of the photograph — that the boy is one of tens of thousands in the audience for the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, a march on Washington on May 17, 1957, that featured Martin Luther King, Jr., labor activist A. Philip Randolph, and singer Mahalia Jackson as speakers — makes the question that much more urgent and that much harder to answer, leaving us with lingering queries about social activism and our place in it that are very much of the moment.

The image is one of many in Let Us March On: Lee Friedlander and the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom,” up on the fourth floor of the Yale University Art Gallery until July 9. Organized by curator La Tanya S. Autry, it offers a glimpse into the civil rights movement so candid that it’s almost obtrusive. Which is part of its power.

Friedlander

“Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. (at podium); first row: Bishop Sherman Lawrence Greene, Bishop William Jacob Walls, Roy Wilkins, and A. Philip Randolph.” Gelatin silver print.

Friedlander — who in the course of his career has exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, and the Whitney — was a 22-year-old freelance photographer in 1957 when he went to the march in Washington commemorating the third anniversary of the Brown v Board of Education decision requiring schools to be desegregated. His photographs documented the luminaries who attended the march, though his approach to them is so disarming that it takes a moment to recognize them. In one image, the man speaking at the podium — shoved into the corner in Friedlander’s composition — is Martin Luther King. In another image, the man in glasses seated on the steps, looking pensive, is Sammy Davis, Jr. The woman with downcast eyes seated next to him is Ruby Dee. In another image, the man staring almost straight into the camera is Harry Belafonte.

Friedlander shot them all with a loose style that even now feels very hip, like someone with a high-quality smartphone. It doesn’t mythologize any of them, and at the same time it captures the energy of the event — an energy that, in the end, came not from the public figures who organized and attended the march, but from the massive audience that gathered to hear them speak, and to make a statement about how much farther civil rights work needed to go.

Friedlander

Untitled, gelatin silver print.

Even at 22, Friedlander had the ability of every great photographer to seem invisible. As he moved through the assembled crowd, he caught the faces of people listening. He captured someone in the crowd reclining on the gentle slope near a fence, someone who maybe was tired of standing. He put us right in the audience as hands rose, waving papers in the air. Maybe it was a cheer? It’s hard to say, though the motion captured in the photograph can’t be denied.

But just as often, it seemed, Friedlander chose not to be invisible, and his most arresting images are those in which his subjects notice him. In the exhibit, there are a lot of these, and for a minute or two, it can be fun to play a game of highbrow Where’s Waldo? with the images — can you find the people who are looking back at you? But there is real depth in Friedlander’s choice to keep these images, because the people looking straight into his camera’s lens display a startling range of expressions that open up a lot of uncomfortable questions.

Friedlander

Untitled, gelatin silver print.

No one poses. Almost no one smiles. Some seem maybe a little amused. But more often, their expressions are too unreadable, too complex, to be summarized easily. They’re conveying something. It’s unclear what. But you want to know.

There’s room in those faces for pride and purpose, but also anger, suspicion, even hostility. Maybe there’s resentment at the photographer’s invasion of privacy, even in a public place. Maybe they’re worried: Who is this young white man, and what is he doing, taking pictures of the crowd at a civil rights march? And the immediacy of the photograph reminds you that, for all we know, their expressions changed a split-second later. Maybe they said something to Friedlander just after he took the picture. Maybe they’d said something before.

There is something deep and complicated and unknowable going on, even in something as clear in purpose as the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom was in 1957. Even if everyone knew why they were there, they didn’t know what the ultimate outcome would be. In a greater sense, we still don’t know, even now. And we don’t know what exactly our place is in it, or what we can do about it.

Sound familiar? 

Let Us March On: Lee Friedlander and the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom” runs at the Yale University Art Gallery, 1111 Chapel St., until July 9. Admission is free. Click here for hours and more information.

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