Read Vince Aletti's excellent short-form review of For All the World to See in this week's print edition of The New Yorker:
INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF PHOTOGRAPHY
1133 Sixth Ave., at 43rd St. (212-857-0000)—“For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights.” Taking his cue from Gordon Parks, the curator Maurice Berger has organized a shrewd, sophisticated show that posits the camera—and the proliferation of black images in pop culture—as a crucial “weapon” in shaping public opinion and motivating change in America before and during the civil-rights era. His evidence is rich and varied, including film clips of Paul Robeson, Amos ’n’ Andy, the March on Washington, Malcolm X, and the Supremes, as well as a wide array of printed matter, from copies of Ebony, Jet, and Sepia to a poster for “Shaft.” The murder of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till, in 1955, and the publication of pictures of his mutilated corpse, is the exhibition’s terrible turning point. In what Berger calls the movement’s “epic battle against invisibility,” every image counts. Through Sept. 12.