CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 10/10/2019

Remembering Jill Freedman (October 19, 1939–October 9, 2019)

We are honored to have worked with photographer Jill Freedman, who not only documented but immersed herself in the lives of the disenfranchised. Featured image is reproduced from Resurrection City, 1968. "I knew I had to shoot the Poor People’s Campaign when they murdered Martin Luther King, Jr.," she wrote. "I had to see what was happening, to record it and be a part of it, I felt so bad. Besides, it sounded too good to miss. So I went and had one of the times of my life, and this is my trip. And I never realized how much it had become a part of me until I was writing this and saying we and us and feeling homesick. Which is what Resurrection City was all about. Of course, it was old stuff from the start. Another nonviolent demonstration. Another march on Washington. Another army camping, calling on a government that acts like the telephone company. Even poverty is ancient history. Always have been poor people, still are, always will be. Because governments are run by ambitious men of no imagination. Whose priorities are so twisted that they burn food while people starve. And we let them. So that history doesn’t change much but the names. Nothing protects the innocent. And no news is new."