Professional Documents
Culture Documents
ON THE COVER
40 ‘An ominous time’
In a year full of political turmoil, a recession, and a continuing war — as well as hope
that a change of leadership can take America in a new direction — Monroe Gallery of
Photography offers a look back at a similar time. 1968 was a year of hope and loss, of
dashed dreams and civil unrest. During those 12 months, many milestone events were
captured on camera, but collectively, images of the time seem to speak of turmoil, pain,
and of things gone wrong. Those images are collected in It Was Forty Years Ago Today,
opening on Saturday, July 5, at the gallery. On the cover: Ken Regan’s image of the
50,000-strong crowd that marched on Washington, D.C., in the summer of 1968, during
the Poor People’s Campaign. Time magazine noted that “the 1968 rally was motivated
by disillusionment and despair. In five years [since Martin Luther King Jr. gave his ‘I Have
a Dream’ speech at the 1963 civil-rights march on Washington], a mood of aspiration
had changed, among many, to one of apocalypse.”