A Photographer's Newsletter

MLK redux

This stack is a repeat of something I published two weeks ago. A really new one ensues almost immediately.

Many of you know that I had a retrospective show at my prep school alma mater, The Frederick Gunn School. I’ve heard (but not yet seen) there have been swell reviews, and that other schools are coming to visit and see this show. This of course is great news and I have already thanked the show’s curator, Lincoln Turner, for his manifold talents in assembling it. Not mentioned in that substack, however, was his contacting UMASS Amherst, where my work is being archived, to seek pictures that haven’t yet been seen. Not only a fine photographer himself, Lincoln is a brilliant editor. He found some images he liked, and printed them himself for the show.. When I saw the photo below, I was impressed. “Wow. who shot that one?” I asked. “You did,” he said.

print of MLK, Jr by Lincoln Turner

Suddenly I remembered that I did, indeed, photograph Martin Luther King at Howard University back in 1962. I simply had no rememberance how impressive this image was, and is. In those days, many assignments were coming in; and after one was completed, that work became housed in a file which miraculously did not get lost in the six decades since. Some did, of course, as I have moved many times. Thankfully, this portrait was not lost.

There is more to come.