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National Guardsman on route to Conventional Hall, Chicago

Photograph
1968 (photographed)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

This photograph was taken during anti-Vietnam riots at the Democratic Party Convention in Chicago in 1968. The photographer Michael Cooper attended the convention with writers William Burroughs, Jean Genet, Allen Ginsberg and Terry Southern, who had been commissioned by Esquire to report on the Convention after President Lyndon Johnson, announced he would not contest a second term. The rioting, which came during a tumultuous year in American politics, were one of the defining events of counter-culture unrest during the 1960s.


Object details

Category
Object type
TitleNational Guardsman on route to Conventional Hall, Chicago (assigned by artist)
Materials and techniques
Gelatin-silver print
Brief description
'National Guardsman on route to Conventional Hall, Chicago', gelatin-silver print, Michael Cooper, Chicago, 1968
Physical description
Black and white image of masked and armed guardsmen standing in a line, with buildings behind them, mounted with green silk
Dimensions
  • Image, approx. height: 37.5cm
  • Image, approx. width: 57cm
  • Frame length: 85.6cm
  • Frame height: 68.5cm
  • Frame depth: 4cm
Style
Gallery label
Michael Cooper 1941-1973 For over a quarter of a century, the photographs of Michael Cooper have been identified with the chronology of the Rolling Stones. His documentation of the years that he knew them, from 1963 to his death a decade later, has ensured that his name is synonymous with the band. Part of its fact - and its mythology. He was also involved with the London art scene of the sixties. The Robert Fraser Gallery in Duke Street, Mayfair - to which Cooper became attached in 1964 - played host to the incipient Pop Art movement as well as to established names such as Jean Dubuffet and Rene Magritte. Cooper typically photographed in available light and in a documentary style. He turned photojournalist proper - though commissioned by no-one - to record two occasions when the counter-culture stood firm against the establishment, calling for the cessation of American military involvement in Vietnam. Cooper turned his camera on the riots at the Democratic Convention, Chicago, in the summer of 1968 and the disturbances in the same year outside the American embassy in London. The subjects of Michael Cooper's photographs were, as he said "not just faces that I have photographed but people I have worked with or become involved with on a very personal level". They are an intimate chronicle of the cultural and political climate of a vibrant moment of history. Robin Muir(1999)
Credit line
Given by Adam Cooper
Summary
This photograph was taken during anti-Vietnam riots at the Democratic Party Convention in Chicago in 1968. The photographer Michael Cooper attended the convention with writers William Burroughs, Jean Genet, Allen Ginsberg and Terry Southern, who had been commissioned by Esquire to report on the Convention after President Lyndon Johnson, announced he would not contest a second term. The rioting, which came during a tumultuous year in American politics, were one of the defining events of counter-culture unrest during the 1960s.
Bibliographic reference
Muir, R. You Are Here: Michael Cooper - The London Sixties, 1999
Collection
Accession number
E.2067-2004

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Record createdApril 27, 2006
Record URL
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