The Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College, presents the first West Coast exhibition of photographs by Bev Grant—Portland-raised activist, musician, artist, and educator. The exhibition is  co-organized by OSMOS founder and director Cay Sophie Rabinowitz and Cooley Gallery director and  curator Stephanie Snyder. Grant’s exhibition celebrates the publication of the artist’s first monograph, Bev Grant Photography 1968-1972, edited by Rabinowitz, and published by OSMOS. 

American photographer Bev Grant created these riveting and tender black and white images from 1968  to 1971, while working for a variety of media outlets such as New York Newsreel, a radical filmmaking  collective established in 1967 (it exists today as Third World Newsreel). During this time, Grant participated in, and photographed, left wing and radical protests in and around New York City and along  the East Coast. In 2017, Grant began organizing and preserving her negatives, which had been sitting  in a box on her closet shelf for fifty years, many unprinted. During this time Grant devoted herself to  raising her two children as a single parent, working fulltime, and leading her socially-conscious folk/rock  band The Human Condition. It was around this time that Bev Grant met Rabinowitz who brought her  professional expertise to conserving and sharing Grant’s remarkable photographs. 

Using a Pentax 35mm camera, Grant chronicled demonstrations and community outreach programs,  providing direct access to the passion and purpose of this incendiary yet constructive time. Grants photographs contain storied first-person portraits, and both serious and celebratory visions of  resistance, survival, and direct action by activist groups whose names are less common today: the Poor  People’s Campaign; New York Radical Women; The Young Lords: and Vets Against the Vietnam War.  Many of the images contain unforgettable glimpses into the lives of the movement’s children, families,  neighborhood elders, and shop owners. 

Grant’s photographs draw visual connections between the radicalized movements of the late 1960s, and those of today, including Black Lives Matter, and, locally, Don’t Shoot Portland: however; striking  differences exist in the presence of the police. The 1960’s uniforms look like leisure wear compared to  the post-9/11 high-tech paramilitary gear the police wear today. These comparisons are critical  reminders of the systemic racism, police violence, and mass incarceration in the United States today.  Grant’s work reanimates the rich contrasts and textures of black-and-white photography from the era,  highlighting the physical power of the medium. The exhibition images are as troubling, urgent, and joyful today as they were fifty years ago.