Our ongoing Cinematographers Series–the last installment of which appeared in our March 19th Spring Directors Issue–has put us, and hopefully you, more in touch with the artistry of assorted shooters over the years.
Yet putting us even more deeply in touch with that artistry–and its potential to impact our lives–was the passing last month of photojournalist Charles Moore at the age of 79. Moore died Thursday, March 11, of natural causes at a nursing home in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.
Moore’s career is a testament to the power of a single image–and it doesn’t necessarily have to be a moving image. Paradoxically, though, Moore’s still images were moving, figuratively. They were images that moved people to action and our society to a better place.
From the late 1950s to the mid ’60s, Moore covered the civil rights movement as a photographer for the Montgomery Advertiser (Alabama) as well as Life magazine.
The images Moore captured–sometimes at his own personal peril–helped to put the national spotlight on injustices, building public opinion and momentum that eventually led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Moore began photographing the then relatively unknown Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Montgomery in 1958, a pivotal image that year being of King getting manhandled while being booked at a police station. The photo appeared in Life magazine as did Moore’s photos of Ku Klux Klan meetings and rioting over the enrollment of James Meredith, the first African-American student at the University of Mississippi.
There were also images of civil rights movement protestors being attacked by police dogs and doused with water from a fire truck hose.
The latter image came in 1963 as students demonstrated in Birmingham, Ala., to spur on desegregation only to find themselves pinned against a building by water spurting from a high-pressure hose.
The son of a Baptist minister, Moore was born in Hackleburg, Ala., and was raised in the nearby town of Tuscumbia. He took up boxing as a teenager, later quipping that he turned in his boxing gloves for a camera.
This led to the title of the 2005 documentary, Charles Moore: I Fight With My Camera.
Moore served in the Marine Corps as a photographer, then studied at Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, Calif. Moore returned to Alabama in ’57 and joined the Montgomery Advertiser.
Later on in his professional career, Moore brought his photojournalism to bear on the Vietnam War, as well as political unrest in Haiti and Venezuela.
Still, it was his coverage of the civil rights movement which has endured most of all.
In fact, a book was published in 1991 chronicling that work: “Powerful Days: The Civil Rights Photography of Charles Moore.”
Moore’s obituary in the Los Angeles Times cited an interview he did with the Birmingham News in ’02, in which he related, “I know the importance isn’t me, but the photographs. It’s proof that the world learned a lot from them. Honestly, if those pictures made my native South, which I love, a better place…then I am darn proud of that.”
Utah Leaders and Locals Rally To Keep Sundance Film Festival In The State
With the 2025 Sundance Film Festival underway, Utah leaders, locals and longtime attendees are making a final push — one that could include paying millions of dollars — to keep the world-renowned film festival as its directors consider uprooting.
Thousands of festivalgoers affixed bright yellow stickers to their winter coats that read "Keep Sundance in Utah" in a last-ditch effort to convince festival leadership and state officials to keep it in Park City, its home of 41 years.
Gov. Spencer Cox said previously that Utah would not throw as much money at the festival as other states hoping to lure it away. Now his office is urging the Legislature to carve out $3 million for Sundance in the state budget, weeks before the independent film festival is expected to pick a home for the next decade.
It could retain a small presence in picturesque Park City and center itself in nearby Salt Lake City, or move to another finalist — Cincinnati, Ohio, or Boulder, Colorado — beginning in 2027.
"Sundance is Utah, and Utah is Sundance. You can't really separate those two," Cox said. "This is your home, and we desperately hope it will be your home forever."
Last year's festival generated about $132 million for the state of Utah, according to Sundance's 2024 economic impact report.
Festival Director Eugene Hernandez told reporters last week that they had not made a final decision. An announcement is expected this year by early spring.
Colorado is trying to further sweeten its offer. The state is considering legislation giving up to $34 million in tax incentives to film festivals like Sundance through 2036 — on top of the $1.5 million in funds already approved to lure the Utah festival to its neighboring... Read More