Poor People’s Campaign 2018, by André Daughtry
In the summer of 2018, André Daughtry served as an official photographer for the Poor People’s Campaign during the 40 Days of Moral Action that took place in 38 state capitals. Drawing inspiration from the original campaign of 1968, spearheaded by Martin Luther King Jr., organizers sought to frame economic enfranchisement as an explicitly moral imperative, intimately linked to racial and other forms of social justice. Daughtry set his journalistic photographs alongside studio portraits of the campaign’s leaders and video in which he invites them to analyze in aesthetic terms the documentary images in which they appear. This highly reflexive juxtaposition encourages viewers to reflect upon how social protests—especially in an era of instantaneous and ubiquitous sharing—are shaped and framed in implicit and explicit ways, with both positive and negative implications. The artist displays these works in triptychs and quadriptychs. Jeff Mansfield (top) is interim minister at Broadway United Church of Christ in New York City. The photo on the right was taken on May 14, in Albany, New York. David F. Telfort (bottom) is pastor of the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn. The photo on the left was taken on May 21.
