Charles Moore (photographer)

Charles Moore
Born	March 9, 1931(1931-03-09)
Died	March 11, 2010(2010-03-11) (aged 79) Palm Beach Gardens, Florida
Nationality	American
Occupation	Photographer

One of Moore's May 3, 1963 photographs of the Children's Crusade in Birmingham, Alabama

Charles Lee Moore (March 9, 1931 – March 11, 2010) was an American photographer most famous for his photographs documenting the American civil rights era.

Life and career

Moore was born in 1931 in Hackleburg, Alabama. He served three years in the U.S. Marines as a photographer and then attended the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, Calif. He next applied for a job as a photographer with the morning and afternoon newspapers The Montgomery Advertiser and The Montgomery Journal.

In 1958, while working in Montgomery, Alabama for the Montgomery Advertiser, he photographed an argument between Martin Luther King, Jr. and two policemen.^[1] His photographs were distributed nationally by the Associated Press, and published in Life.

From this start, Moore traveled throughout the South documenting the Civil Rights Movement. His most famous^{[citation needed]} photograph, Birmingham, depicts demonstrators being attacked by firemen wielding high-pressure hoses. U.S. Senator Jacob Javits, said that Moore's pictures "helped to spur passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964."^[1]

In 1962, Moore left the newspapers to start a freelance career. He worked for the Black Star picture agency, which sold much of his work to Life.

Moore went on to cover the Vietnam War and many other trouble spots. He then moved on to nature, fashion and travel photography, in addition to corporate work.

He also photographed conflicts in the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Haiti.

In 1989, Charles Moore became the first recipient of the Eastman Kodak Crystal Eagle Award for Impact in Photojournalism which is awarded for a "body of photographic work which has influenced public perceptions on important issues of our time" in the NPPA–University of Missouri Pictures of the Year Competition.^[2]

In 2008, Moore's last photography observed the removal of a tree at Barton Hall (Alabama), a historic 1840's plantation home.

Moore died at age 79, on March 11, 2010, in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.^[3]

Bibliography

• Powerful Days: The Civil Rights Photography of Charles Moore, (2001) University of Alabama Press, ISBN 978-0-8173-1152-0
• The Motherlode (2006), Chronicle Books
• I Fight With My Camera, (2005) video, 26 minutes, Humanity Docs (also available on Google videos)

See also

• Photographers of the American civil rights movement

References

1. ^ ^{a b} "About Charles Moore". Kodak. http://www.kodak.com/US/en/corp/features/moore/aboutCharlesMoore.shtml. Retrieved 2006-12-26. 
2. ^ Chapnick, Harold (1994). Truth Needs No Ally. Columbia, Missouri, USA: University of Missouri Press. pp. 154-155. ISBN 0-8262-0955-6. 
3. ^ Photographer Charles Moore dies at 79, Associated Press, March 15, 2010.

External links

• Collection of Moore photographs on Kodak.com
• "Charles Moore, Rights-Era Photographer, Dies at 79," New York Times, March 15, 2010
• Charles Moore - post-mortem audio story and slideshow by NPR
• Charles Moore's final photography 2008

Persondata
Name	Moore, Charles
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	March 9, 1931
Place of birth
Date of death	March 11, 2010
Place of death	Palm Beach Gardens, Florida