작품 상세

Gelatin silver print, printed later 29 x 19,5 cm (11.4 x 7.7 in) Signed by the photographer in ink in the margin, annotated "The Black Panther's top leader whose name is unknown, Chicago, Ill.,U.S.A., 1969" by him in pencil on the reverse PROVENANCE directly from the photographer LITERATURE Hiroji Kubota, Portfolio - USA. Black Panthers, 1969. In Hiroji Kubota's photograph a metal construction obscures our view of a man who has sought additional cover behind a pair of dark sunglasses. Still, one small yet essential detail speaks about him: his armband, which can be seen in the middle of the picture, reveals him as a leader of the Black Panther Party, an organisation which formed after the assassination of Malcom X as a civil rights movement within the Afro-American community. The group's goals were to fight social repression based on skin colour and to force measures of self-protection against nascent racism. Due to continuous unrest, the police and FBI carried out repeated illegal house searches and arbitrary arrests during this period, to which the Black Panther Party retaliated with further attacks. Magnum photographer Hiroji Kubota laid the foundation for his career as a photographer when he travelled to the USA in the early 1960s. Among his first photographs are visual documents of the March on Washington, of Martin Luther King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech, and photograph series shot in the South of the USA. The present image was taken in Chicago in 1969, at a time when the Black Panther Party had reached the height of its trajectory, with almost 100 local groups acting in concert, and thus it portrays an important chapter in American history.