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.”
Trump Asks Supreme Court To Delay TikTok Ban
President-elect Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court on Friday to pause the potential TikTok ban from going into effect until his administration can pursue a "political resolution" to the issue.
The request came as TikTok and the Biden administration filed opposing briefs to the court, in which the company argued the court should strike down a law that could ban the platform by Jan. 19 while the government emphasized its position that the statute is needed to eliminate a national security risk.
"President Trump takes no position on the underlying merits of this dispute. Instead, he respectfully requests that the Court consider staying the Act's deadline for divestment of January 19, 2025, while it considers the merits of this case," said Trump's amicus brief, which supported neither party in the case and was written by D. John Sauer, Trump's choice for solicitor general.
The argument submitted to the court is the latest example of Trump inserting himself in national issues before he takes office. The Republican president-elect has already begun negotiating with other countries over his plans to impose tariffs, and he intervened earlier this month in a plan to fund the federal government, calling for a bipartisan plan to be rejected and sending Republicans back to the negotiating table.
He has been holding meetings with foreign leaders and business officials at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida while he assembles his administration, including a meeting last week with TikTok CEO Shou Chew.
Trump has reversed his position on the popular app, having tried to ban it during his first term in office over national security concerns. He joined the TikTok during his 2024 presidential campaign and his team used it to connect with younger... Read More