Resurrection City, 1968
Photographs and text by Jill Freedman
Essays by John Edwin and James Bryant
Damiani
£35
Of all the photographers who briefly parachuted in to get the glory and snap pictures of its famous visitors to sell to newspapers, none of them truly captured Resurrection City with the rawness and urgency that Jill Freedman did. Her dynamic instinctual street photography exposes the shanty town city living and breathing in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC in the spring of 1968 only weeks after the assassination of Martin Luther King. King and the Southern Leadership Conference called upon those known as the “invisible poor” to come to the capitol to petition the government, the Poor People’s Campaign to show the nation the realities of their country and its underclass and they came in their thousands.
Copyright © Jill Freedman
Freedman at the time was a keen amateur with a darkroom and her camera as a witness she her quit her job to join the PPC. Living in Resurrection City gave Freedman a unique opportunity to capture more than visual sound bites. For six weeks her street photography built into a unique body of work revealing the plight of the poor living in their makeshift homes amidst their protests and struggle for civil rights.
Copyright © Jill Freedman
In one image the hand of a police officer gripping his baton behind his back sits close at eye level in the foreground as a group of residents listen to an unseen speaker. The looming threat of violence resounds throughout this book, yet beautiful moments of calm are also present. In another a man aptly plays his flute at the edge of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, looking east towards the Washington Monument as if trying to conjure up answers from the water. On the cover of this book, a woman sits shoeless on the grand steps looking out towards an uncertain future. This stark reminder of the urgency felt then is still with us now. Freedman’s street photography is as moving today as it was then and a stark reminder that although this Resurrection City no longer stands many of its problems still remain.
Copyright © Jill Freedman
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