Idgie Says:
This is a beautiful coffee table book that has some fantastic behind the scenes photographs of the times - from the Selma march to the Kings at home, sitting at their kitchen table. The photograph of Jim Letherer, clearly exhausted after joining the march with only one leg just reaches out and grabs you - as does the photograph of the sharply observant black students lining the marching path, eager but nervous at the same time. All of the photographs are in black and white, making the scenes crisp and sharp. A really excellent piece of important history bound into a lovely form to enjoy and share.
Controversy and Hope
The Civil Rights Photographs
of James Karales
Hardcover: 176 pages
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press (April 18, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1611171571
ISBN-13: 978-1611171570
Book Description:
Controversy and Hope commemorates the civil rights legacy of James
Karales (1930-2002), a professional photojournalist who documented the
1965 Selma to Montgomery March for Voting Rights with a dedication and
vision that led the New York Times to deem his work "a pictorial anthem
of the civil rights movement."
Equipped with ambition and a B.F.A.
in photography from Ohio University in 1955, Karales headed to New York
and found work as a darkroom assistant to master photographer W. Eugene
Smith. Karales's earliest photo-essays had already come to the attention
of Edward Steichen, curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art
in New York, which acquired two of Karales's photographs from his series
on the Greek American community of Canton, Ohio. Another early
photo-essay, on the integrated mining community of Rendville, Ohio, was
featured in Karales's first solo exhibition, held in 1958 at Helen Gee's
Limelight gallery in Greenwich Village. From 1960 to 1971, Karales
worked as a staff photographer for Look magazine, traveling the world
during a time of dynamic social change and recording the harsh realities
he witnessed at home and abroad.
By the time Karales documented the
fifty-four-mile voting-rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama,
in 1965 he had already developed a strong relationship with its most
prominent leader, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and had been granted
unprecedented access to the King family. That connection translated into
a powerful empathy in the photographs that still resonates for viewers
today.
The Village Voice described Karales's civil rights work as
bearing "the weight of history and the grace of art." Controversy and
Hope presents many of Karales's images from the era, including some
photographs published here for the first time. Julian Cox, with the
assistance of Rebekah Jacob and Monica Karales, has selected a bold
representation of Karales's photographs, augmenting his visual legacy
with biographical information and personal recollections. Civil rights
leader Andrew Young, who appears in some of Karales's photographs, has
provided a foreword to the volume.