Posted Date: December 10, 2020

Episode Description: In this episode, LAC member Irenae Aigbedion interviews Rob Gerhardt, a New York based photographer, on his series, “Mic Check.” Focusing on the development of the #BlackLivesMatter movement across New York City, his series is an ongoing chronicle beginning in 2014 after the grand jury ruling in the case of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO. The conversation asks us as listeners to consider what it means to write history and to use the tools at our disposal–in Rob’s case, photography–to make an intervention in a very tense historical moment. Ultimately, the two discuss the resonances between the contemporary #BLM movement and the US Civil Rights Movement of the 50s and 60s and speculate on what might be different this time around.

Guest Biography

Robert Gerhardt is a documentary photographer and freelance writer. He is a member of the National Press Photographers’ Association in the United States, and an absentee member of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Hong Kong.

In 1999 he received his B.A. in Anthropology/Sociology and Art History from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA. And in 2007 he received his M.F.A. in Photography from the Lesley University College of Art and Design in Cambridge, MA.

Rob’s photographs have been in numerous solo and group exhibitions in North America, Europe and Asia, and is in a number of public and private collections, including The Museum of the City of New York, The New York Historical Society, and the Arab American National Museum. His work has also been published in The Guardian, The Diplomat, The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Newsweek, Haaretz, and Suddeutsche Zeitung, among others.

Rob’s writings have covered civil and human rights, religion and press freedom. His articles have been published in the Hong Kong Free Press, The Diplomat, The Correspondent, and The Brooklyn Rail among others.

Project Title: Mic Check

Project Description: In Rob’s own words, “I have been documenting the Black Lives Matter Movement in New York City for my series “Mic Check.” I began making the photographs in this series in November of 2014 when a Grand Jury absolved a white police officer in the killing of  Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Two weeks later, a second Grand Jury on Staten Island cleared white police officers in the killing of Eric Garner.  The local protests that erupted in response to these decisions in Ferguson and on Staten Island spread to cities and towns across the country.  People took to the streets to protest against both Grand Jury decisions, along with overreach, brutality and racism among police forces in general.  And as more incidents occurred throughout the country, more protests happened, and people over and over again took to the streets. In New York City, the mass protests ranged from long marches through the city, to candlelight vigils, to protesters occupying stores in Times Square, and everything in between to get their voices heard.  The events would involve hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of people.  And they happened so frequently that it was all I could do to stay on top of what was going on in the city.  While I had always carried a camera with me, I began packing my camera bag every morning with more and more gear and film so that no matter what happened, and where it happened, I would be ready. With the death of George Floyd, among others, the movement, which had been shrinking, has come roaring back to life. And so I continue to find myself out in the streets documenting what goes on.”

The following photos come from Rob’s “Mic Check” series; please visit Rob’s website to see more of the series and to explore the rest of his portfolio.

Recommended Readings

• James Baldwin, “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to my Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation” in The Fire Next Time, 1963.
• Jonathan Kozol, Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation, 1995.
• –, Fire in the Ashes: Twenty-Five Years Among the Poorest Children in America, 2012.
• Lisa Belkin, Show Me a Hero: A Tale of Murder, Suicide, Race, and Redemption, 1999.
• Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, 2010.
• Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me, 2015.