A new London exhibition showcases Shames’ photographs of activists and revolutionaries such as Martin Luther King and the Black Panthers

BY BEN WEST

In the 1960s, American photographer Stephen Shames befriended and photographed activists and revolutionaries such as Martin Luther King and the Black Panthers.

Founded in 1966 in Oakland, California, the Black Panther Party was the era’s most influential militant black power organisation, and Shames, now 78, became their photographer. His archive of Panther images is the largest in the world.

“I first met the Panthers when I was a student at the University of California,” he explains on the eve of his new exhibition, his first in London. Entitled Black Panthers & Revolution: The Art of Stephen Shames, it is at the Amar Gallery in Fitzrovia, London, and features a number of his powerful, iconic civil rights images. But it also shows many that are being displayed for the first time in Europe, and others that have never been exhibited before.

The exhibition features photographs of Martin Luther King Jr, Bobby Seale, Huey Newton and writers Maya Angelou and James Baldwin among others, and also Angela Davis during her trial for conspiracy for murder. They also include stirring images of Baldwin visiting Seale when Seale was in jail awaiting trial for riot-conspiracy charges, and others of Afeni Shakur, mother of rapper Tupac, as a young Black Panther.

“It was 1967, during the Vietnam War period, and there were a lot of protests, and the Panthers were on the campus a lot. I first met them at one of the first anti-war marches in San Francisco. My dad and I marched together and I noticed the founders Bobby and Huey selling Mao’s Red Books as we were marching by. I took a picture. I wasn’t even really a photographer then, I was still a student.

“I took more pictures of them and I brought some of the pictures by their office. Bobby Seale really liked the pictures and asked if he could use them in their newspaper, The Black Panther. I said, yes and our relationship developed. Bobby brought me into the Panthers and introduced me to everyone. He became like a mentor to me and got me involved in the black community. I really learned a lot from him.

“Unfortunately I think the world is much worse place today than it was then. The Panthers had a 10-point platform and programme and that included justice, police brutality, poverty, housing, jobs. However, all the things that were in the Panther 10-point programme need to be addressed today. And in many ways, especially in the United States, the current administration is trying to go backwards.

“I think the Panthers are really important because they were one of the groups in the sixties that not only had a programme for black people, but they had pro-community programmes, a free breakfast programme, free medical clinics. They escorted people to pick up their cheques and cashed their cheques so they wouldn’t be robbed. They had free clothing, free food, free shoes, a tremendous number of programmes all based on needs in the community.

“But the other important thing is that the Panthers made alliances. They weren’t just looking to be for African Americans, for black people. They made alliances with Asian groups, a white group called the Young Patriots, who were basically from Appalachia who had a the Confederate flag on the back of their jackets. They made alliances with Puerto Rican groups, the Young Lords.

“So the idea of the Panthers, which is valid today, is that we need to make coalitions. We can’t just stay in our little groups. We have to make broad-based coalitions, and we have to really try and deal with issues, really important issues of jobs, of money, housing, of all those things that are really important to people. The Panthers were at the forefront of it.

“School kids didn’t get free meals at school, and the Black Panthers did the first meal programme for kids at school. Kids would go to school hungry and it was hard for them to concentrate and learn. And the Panthers started the breakfast programme in 1969 and Lyndon Johnson picked that up and made it part of his war on poverty. And a number of states, including California, did it too, after the Panthers did it.

“And that’s one of the reasons I think this exhibition at the Amar Gallery is important. I think the Panthers can inspire us today. It can be very depressing today to think about what’s going on internationally and in my country, the United States, especially. The Panthers and the photographs hopefully can inspire us. We really back then made great inroads into defeating racism and to really calling attention to the fact that that racism destroys societies and destroys people’s lives.

“And now that people are trying to, in many countries trying to go back to that, those horrible days and those horrible ideas again. I think hopefully the pictures will inspire people to understand that we actually made great progress back then.

“The Panthers had some brilliant leaders. It wasn’t just Bobby and Huey. They had Kathleen Cleaver, they had Erica Huggins, they had a whole bunch of leaders. They ended up having offices and chapters all over the United States. And most of them were run by women. Two thirds of the Panthers were women.

“The Panthers really motivated a lot of young men and women who grew up in poverty to do incredible things, and to really help their community and build a movement. These programmes are what a just society, especially a wealthy society like the United States or Britain or most of the EU countries should be doing for their people. And instead of just talking about it, they actually set up a real programme that did it, that showed people, yes, it can be done. The message also was that poor people can do it.

“Right now I’m in lots of international museums and people are buying my art prints. But back then, back in the day, I had assignments – because there were actually magazines back then – but I couldn’t sell my Panther pictures. Nobody wanted them. It took about 40 years for the the first book of the Panther pictures to come out.”

At that time the Panthers were widely seen as too controversial and it later emerged that there was a government and FBI programme, Cointelpro, which attempted to discredit the Panthers and spread false rumours.

“Early on we were going to do a book. Huey Newton wanted to write a Panther book, and use my pictures. But President Nixon had Spiro Agnew, as vice president, contact the president of the publishing company that was giving us a contract and said, ‘Nixon doesn’t want this book to come out.’ So they refused to publish the book, and they fired the editor who was going sign the contract with us. And then 40 years later Aperture published the first Panther book.”

Shames believes that the Black Panther movement triggered a road for gay rights, the women’s movement and disability activists to follow.

In subsequent years his photographs covered everything from civil war in Lebanon to the Troubles in Northern Ireland, from photographing street kids to child soldiers, and much more.

Much honoured and awarded over the years, Shames’ images are in the permanent collections of 42 international museums and galleries, including the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, the International Center of Photography, and the Museum of Modern Art all in New York, and the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC.

At a time when racism is on the rise, hopefully this exhibition serves as a reminder that equality has been a struggle for millions often suppressed due to race, gender or sexuality.

Black Panthers & Revolution: The Art of Stephen Shames runs until 6 July at the Amar Gallery, Kirkman House, 12-14 Whitfield Street, London, W1T 2RF; 07386 479592, open Fri-Sun 11am-6pm, Mon-Thur sales appointments only; admission free

Photographs by Stephen Shames, courtesy of the Amar Gallery