This past week I took my two photography classes from Delaware Valley University’s Center for Learning in Retirement to see a small but meaningful social documentary exhibit at the James A. Michener Art Museum here in Doylestown. There always seems to be a great photography exhibit at the Michener during the semester so it really works out well for what I want accomplish, which is to show the students the many photographic opportunities that surround them.

A Time to Break Silence: Pictures of Social Change is being presented to coincide with the 50th anniversary Martin Luther King’s famous speech “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” and includes striking black and white photographs made primarily during the 1960s. Civil rights, anti-war and anti-nuclear protest, racist acts and other signs of that turbulent time. Almost all the photographs were made by two Bucks County based photographers, Edmund Eckstein and Jack Rosen. Prior to visiting the show I wasn’t familiar with either photographer’s work, which is sad. The work they produced was wonderful and important! One image made in a Sears department store shows rows of televisions displaying the news of John F. Kennedy’s assassination and a anguished young woman sitting in front with her head in her hands. Another particularly troubling and dramatic picture of a nighttime Klu Klux Klan cross burning refuses to fade from my memory.

I walked away from the exhibit thinking of the power and character of black and white film based images and their ability to capture raw emotion. The photographs also served as a strong reminder that in 50 years some things haven’t changed very much.

A Time to Break Silence: Pictures of Social Change Exhibit runs through February 4, 2018.