The decade of the 1960's was a photojournalist's dream. The war in Vietnam, campus and street protests, "police brutality", and an exceptionally expressive music and counter culture were all subjects that readily availed themselves to the camera lens.
These transfixing photos were not just the pop culture paparazzi snapshots that befoul the media today -- it seemed like every image made a powerful political or social statement, so much so that many have become iconic.
The selected images presented today are from the book, "Shots: Photographs From the Underground Press", published by the Douglas Book Corporation in 1971 and edited by David Fenton and Liberation News Service with assistance by Ericka Huggins and Bobby Seale. They represent mostly the violent side of protest and dissent among the youth and people of color in America (or Amerika, as they preferred to label it). In an ironic display of sentiment, numerous photos show individuals alternately flashing the "peace sign" with the raised fist of defiance against the establishment. It's also ironic that these voices against materialism, corporate greed and "The Man", printed their book using a corporate publishing house.
At the close of the decade, much of the antiestablishment movement decayed with the ravages of civil chaos, violence, hard drug use and addiction, widespread communicable diseases from "the crabs" to "the clap" to hepatitis and the detritus of people living on the streets of places like the Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco.
The spirit of the 60's wasn't quite over yet, but there was a palpable current of cynicism and malaise that forced the evolution of new streams of popular culture in the 1970's.
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