MARCH ON WASHINGTON: Danny Lyon’s iconic images such as this August 23, 1963, shot of demonstrators during the march on Washington will be on view in an exhibition that will open at The College of New Jersey on Wednesday, January 28 and run through March 1 at the TCNJ Gallery on the campus at 2000 Pennington Road in Ewing. Gallery hours are Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from noon to 7 p.m., and Sundays from 1 to 3 p.m. For more information, call (609) 771-2633, or visit: tcnj.edu/artgallery. (Photo Courtesy of Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York)

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the historic march from Selma to Montgomery in Alabama that ultimately saw President Lyndon Johnson sign the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Besides being the subject of the recent feature film drama, Selma, the march, which was led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., together with James Bevel, Hosea Williams, and John Lewis, is documented by the work of photographer Danny Lyon who lived through the period and witnessed the sit-ins, freedom rides, and the 1963 March on Washington that brought about the 1964 Civil Rights Act and legal desegregation of the South.

Some 50 iconic photographs of the period will be on view in an exhibition opening at The College of New Jersey on Wednesday, January 28. “Danny Lyon: Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement” includes works by the renowned photographer and filmmaker that are considered to be some of the era’s most defining.

Born in Brooklyn in 1942, Mr. Lyon became a leading post-World War II documentary photographer and filmmaker, helping create a mode of photojournalism in which the picture-maker is deeply and personally embedded in the subject matter.

As the first staff photographer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), he began his career in the thick of SNCC and Civil Rights Movement activities.

From 1962 to 1964, Mr. Lyon traveled the South and Mid-Atlantic regions. His photographs were published in The Movement, a documentary book about the Southern Civil Rights Movement, and later in Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement, the photographer’s memoir of his SNCC year.

“This young white New Yorker came South with a camera and a keen eye for history. And he used these simple, elegant gifts to capture the story of one of the most inspiring periods in America’s 20th century,” said former SNCC member and U. S. Congressmen John Lewis.

Presented as part of a campus-wide exploration of justice and in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, the TCNJ exhibition features some of the photographer’s most powerful images, including the 1963 “Sit in Toddle House Atlanta” and Sheriff Jim Clark arresting two demonstrators with placards on the steps of the federal building in Selma. Both are exhibited courtesy of Edwynn Houk Gallery of New York.

Largely self-taught, Mr. Lyon is a graduate of the University of Chicago. He has had one-person exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Menil Collection in Houston.

“Danny Lyon: Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement” is on loan to TCNJ by art2art Circulating Exhibitions, a non-profit group that organizes traveling exhibitions. It is presented courtesy of Edwynn Houk Gallery of New York.

Cinéma-Vérité

In conjunction with the exhibition, TCNJ’s Department of Communications Studies will screen Mr. Lyon’s 1975 film Los Niños Abandonados on Wednesday, February 11, at 10 a.m. in the Kendall Hall Screening Room.

Acclaimed as “one of the great cinéma-vérité documentaries,” the film focuses on homeless children in Columbia.

The exhibition, which will continue through March 1, and related programs are free and open to the public. The Art Gallery is located in the AIMM Building on the campus at 2000 Pennington Road in Ewing. Gallery hours are Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from noon to 7 p.m., and Sundays from 1 to 3 p.m. For more information, call (609) 771-2633, or visit: tcnj.edu/artgallery.