This new book, Mine Eyes Have Seen, collects Bob Adelman’s work as a photographer for the Congress for Racial Equality (Core) and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, where he spent much of the 1960s documenting the lives of black Americans.
Adelman joined with thousands of other white activists in a battle against the racist Jim Crow segregation laws in the South, and the brutal economic racism in the North. Taken at a time when mainstream media in the US depicted black people only as sportsmen, performers, or rioters, Adelman’s portraits of black men and women are dignified and insightful. Bob and his lens got right up close and captured life with a brutal honesty. In his New York street scenes, his shots of cotton fields in the Deep South, and his depictions of churches, cafes, bars and outhouses, Adelman gives us a taste of black life at a time of great social and political change.
Mine Eyes Have Seen: Bearing Witness to the Struggle for Civil Rights by Bob Adelman and Charles Johnson (Thames and Hudson). Exhibition at Westwood Gallery, NYC.
