As we enter a new age of protest—or is it simply a continuum of “I can’t believe I’ve been carrying the same sign for 45 years”—it’s a good time to delve into photo archives regarding issues of social change. And how photography has foregrounded important landmark causes.

At  The Photography Show presented by AIPAD, which runs from April 5^th to 8^th at Pier 94, NYC, a featured exhibition on the Black Panther Party, and Steven Kasher Gallery’s presentation Performance/Politics, offer engaging perspectives on the human desire for freedom, and freedom of expression.

All Power: Visual Legacies of the Black Panther Party is one of three special exhibitions at the show. Organized by Michelle Dunn Marsh, Director, Photographic Center Northwest, the show is drawn from a book of the same name (Minor Matters Books, 2016) and showcases a select group of contemporary black artists, including emerging and internationally acclaimed practitioners, women and men spanning twenty-two to seventy years of age, who have been informed or influenced by the Panthers. Exhibiting artists include: Maikoiyo Alley-Barnes, Endia Beal, Bruce Bennett, Howard Cash, Kris Graves, Ayana V. Jackson, Kambui Olujimi, Lewis Watts, Carrie Mae Weems, Hank Willis Thomas, and Robert Wade.

Lewis Watts, Graffiti, West Oakland 1993; courtesy PCNW

Though active for less than twenty years (1966–1982), the Panthers, formed in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, who were college students in Oakland, California, indelibly pierced the public consciousness. 2018 marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Seattle chapter, the first outside of California. After AIPAD, this exhibition will be on view at Photographic Center Northwest in Seattle through June 10th. Info Read Michelle Dunn Marsh in DART

Anonymous, KKK Demonstration During the Week of the Federal Government's Order to Desegregate Alabama Public Schools, September 6, 1963; Steven Kasher Gallery

Steven Kasher, whose eponymous gallery works with several noted archives, has curated a free-for-all exhibition that capitalizes on the performative qualities of photography and Kasher’s encyclopedic knowledge of the subject. Performance/Politics presents images staged for the camera [Meryl Meiser; Nona Faustine, Miles Aldridge] to street photography [Fred W. McDarrah, Jill Freedman]; straight documentation [Bruce Davidson, Leonard Freed; Jerome Liebling]; the downtown scene [Laura Levine, Martha Cooper]; surrealism [Ming Smith, Ivan Forde]. Among the subjects are James Baldwin, Roy Cohn, Angela Davis, Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg, Kim Gordon, JFK, RFK, MLK, Carolee Schneeman, Donald Trump and too many more to mention. See a preview here.

Steven Kasher Gallery, Booth 600.

Martha Cooper, Love Always Wins, Installation Artist Olek at the Women's March on Washington D.C., January 21, 2017; Steven Kasher Gallery

Nona Faustine, Over Her Dead Body, Tweed Courthouse, Brooklyn, NY, 2013; Steven Kasher Gallery

AIPAD talks and book signings on the theme:
Thursday, April 5
1:30 - 2:30 p.m. | ARTIST TALK: Susan Meiselas*
With Kristen Lubben, Executive Director, Magnum Foundation
Photographer Susan Meiselas discusses her current exhibition Mediations at the Jeu de Paume in Paris, which runs from February 6 through May 20, 2018, as well as issues of gender inequality in the photography world.
4:30 - 5:30 p.m. | HISTORY/HER STORIES: PHOTOGRAPHS BY WOMEN*
Sarah Hermanson Meister, Curator, The Museum of Modern Art with Artists Tina Barney, Sofia Borges, Sam Contis, Liz Deschenes, and LaToya Ruby Frazier
One cannot tell the history of photography without women artists. Sarah Meister invites leading practitioners to join her in a conversation that examines this history in light of each artist's contemporary experience.
Saturday, April 7 
1:30 - 2:30 p.m. | FUTURE GENDER*
Zackary Drucker, Producer of the television series Transparent, Artist, and Activist; Amos Mac, Founding Publisher of Original Plumbing magazine; Nick Sethi, Artist; and Diana Tourjee, Co-Founder, Flawless Sabrina Archive and Staff Writer, Vice
How have trans and gender-nonconforming individuals used photography to imagine new expressions of social identity? Zackary Drucker, artist, activist, and guest editor of Aperture magazine’s landmark issue “Future Gender” will discuss transgender lives, communities, and histories in photography with Amos Mac, Diana Tourjee, and Nick Sethi, a New York-based photographer whose projects include a series on India’s festival for members of the third gender.
Sunday, April 8
1:30- 2:30 p.m. | REFRACTION: NEW PHOTOGRAPHY OF THE AFRICAN DIASPORA*
Niama Safia Sandy, Curator, and Artists Nona Faustine, Adama Delphine Fawundu, and Shawn Theodore
A discussion of the upcoming exhibition Refraction: New Photography of the African Diaspora on view at Steven Kasher Gallery from April 19 through June 2, 2018, which looks at reframing blackness through visualart and challenging existing representations of black life.
3:00 - 4:00 p.m. | ALL POWER: Visual Legacies of the Black Panther Party*
Michelle Dunn Marsh, Executive Director and Curator, Photographic Center Northwest, and Artists Endia Beal, Ayana Jackson, and Robert Wade
This exhibition, which debuts at The Photography Show, will be on view at the Photographic Center Northwest from April 26 through June 10, 2018. The exhibition, and book of the same name published by Minor Matters, showcases 16 black artists – including Carrie Mae Weems and Hank Willis Thomas – whose work has been informed or influenced by the Black Panthers.
Saturday, April 1
1:00-2:00 pm Stephen Bulger Gallery,  booth 602: book signing with Sunil Gupta and Charan Singh. Delhi: Communities of Belonging (The New Press, November 2016) offers a powerful series of more than 150 photographs and accompanying first-person texts, which together present an unprecedented portrait of LGBTQ people's lives in India today. Gupta and Singh chronicle the halting emergence of networks of those living under the shadow of stigma and criminalized behavior -- in a country where anti-sodomy laws dating back to the British Empire were recently struck down, only to be reaffirmed in a surging wave of homophobia.
The Photography Show will feature 96 established and new galleries from at least 14 countries and 49 cities from across the U.S. and around the world, including Europe, the U.K., Asia, Canada, and South America. In addition, more than 30 book sellers and publishers will be represented at the Show. A full list of exhibitors is available at AIPADshow.com/Exhibitors.

See all AIPAD Talks here 4LSphoto