Human Rights Human Wrongs, The Photographers Gallery - exhibition review

More than 300 black and white prints from photojournalism agency Black Star which span fifty years of international history
Part of history: Charles Moore, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America, May 3 1963 (Picture: The Black Star Collection, Ryerson Image Centre)
Sue Steward13 February 2015

This exhibition is remarkable: intense, informative, historically significant and often harrowing. The collection of more than 300 black and white prints from photojournalism agency Black Star spans fifty years of international history marking key moments in wars, politics, famine, fights against racism and colonial changes.

The gallery’s purple walls carry individual scenes of people and action while the white walls expose narratives in series, but all are mingled internationally and chronologically. The mix of brutality and death, street riots and demonstrations can be horrifying: a boy walking past bodies in Belsen-Buchenwald, American soldiers showing off the bodies of Vietnamese babies, a Nigerian child begging during the Biafran War.

Many of the prolific photographers in this agency reveal heroism: Lennart Nilsson during the Congolese War; Britain’s John Bulmer in South Africa’s apartheid violence; Charles Moore’s streets assignments during the Civil Rights Movement. Martin Luther King is covered broadly, often with domestic shots by Bob Fitch who photographed him with his son and wife.

The exhibition’s closing call compliments these extraordinary photographs: “Everyone has the right to recognition, everywhere, as a person before the law.”

Until 5 April (020 7087 9300, tpg.org.uk)

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