Human Rights, Human Wrongs: Photographers' Gallery

Photography plays a huge role in the documentation and broadcasting of crimes against humanity. As photographers capture callous acts of war and human struggle, the visual legacy of these events is changed by the mass media. In this new exhibition at the Photographer’s gallery, Human Rights and Human Wrongs, the power of photojournalism and its role in humanitarian crises is exposed.
Photographers’ Gallery exhibition London
Curator Mark Sealy has used Article Six from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - Everybody has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law – as the guiding force behind this London photography exhibition. Sealy poses the question, what does the human right to recognition actually mean, and how is this recognition generated and controlled?
Featuring over 250 original press prints from the prestigious Black Star collection of twentieth century photoreportage at Ryerson University, this exhibition examines key conflicts and struggles around the world. These include the US Civil Rights movement, independence movements in Africa, the Vietnam War, and protests in Europe, which have challenged views regarding racism, colonialism and ethics.
What does it all mean?
Using photographs, magazines and archives, this new London exhibition aims to convey the notion that a single image cannot adequately represent an event. By examining an iconic image in relation to a wider sequence of photographs, the event becomes more than a single moment and other points of view are revealed.
Photographers’ Gallery London exhibition highlights
The images on display are powerful, often polarising, and at times uplifting. Look out for Robert Lebeck’s 1960 print of a man stealing the sword of King Baudouin I of Belgium, during a ceremonial procession in Congo. Many photographs, despite their troubling context, are visually interesting. Pay attention to Charles Moore’s group of mocking protestors at Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 and Hilmar Pabel’s street scene during the 1968 Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia.
This show gets our vote for one of the top photography exhibitions of 2015.