1968: A Year of Protest
Twenty-eighteen marks the 50thanniversary of a year of world-wide protest. From the March 17thanti-war demonstrations, in London; to the Poor People’s Campaign occupation of the National Mall in Washington [May-June]; to the violent Events of May, in Paris, which brought all of France to a standstill; to the Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society strike and occupation of the administration; to the liberalizing Prague Spring, which failed when Russian tanks invaded the Czech capital on August 21st, the Western world was inexorably changed when mass protest became a new form of political currency—and great photographers were on the job with their cameras. Above,© Josef Koudelka: Invasion 68; Magnum Photos
© Bruno Barbey: Worker and student
demonstration from Republique to Denfert-Rochereau in Paris. May, 1968; Magnum Photos
© Marc Riboud: Washington DC, USA, 1967;
Magnum Photos
These events, along with the Tet Offensive and My Lai Massacre in Viet Nam; anti-war protests at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and the March on the Pentagon the year before; the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy; marked a year in which these tragedies have all but masked the economic and social changes of globalism as it emerged through the introduction of the first jumbo jet—the Boeing 747—that year; the capitalization of Youth Culture; Counterculture, Mods, Rockers, Hippies, and Woodstock Nation; and the Black Power salute at the Mexico Olympic Games that rocked the world.
© Raymond Depardon: Olympic games.
Mexico City, Mexico, 1968; Magnum Photos
In this pre-social media world, the signal events of 1968 [and one from 1967] were indelibly etched into the collective consciousness through print media by some of the greatest photojournalists of the time. Today, DART honors protest as a social norm, and some of the Magnum photographers whose images have helped to shape the historical record.
© David Hurn: Anti-Vietnam War riots in front
of the American Embassy. England, Great Britain. , 1968; Magnum Photos