Throughout the 1950s, Charles Brittin
was the unofficial house photographer for the Beat community that coalesced
around the artist Wallace Berman. Brittin settled in Venice Beach, California,
in 1951, and his beach shack became a hangout for the Berman circle, which
included actors Dean Stockwell and Dennis Hopper, artist John Altoon, curator
Walter Hopps and poet David Meltzer, among many others. A self-taught
photographer, Brittin was working as a mailman at the time, and spent much of
his free time wandering the streets with a camera; he came to know Venice
intimately, and his pictures of the town are freighted with a hushed beauty and
forlorn sweetness. In the early 1960s the focus of Brittin's life shifted
dramatically when he became involved with the civil rights movement. "I suddenly
realized I was compelled to do something," Brittin recalls, "because the times
demanded it." As a photographer for the Congress of Racial Equality, Brittin
documented the dramatic non-violent protests that occurred throughout Southern
California, and made a courageous trip to the deep South, in1965, to assist with
the registration of black voters. As the 60s progressed he documented the
antiwar movement, and by the end of the decade was devoting most of his time to
the Black Panther Party. These two very different social revolutions are at the
heart of Charles Brittin: West and South. With 150 images--138 of them
previously unpublished--this monograph is published on the occasion of a 2011
retrospective at Michael Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles.
Charles Brittin (born 1928) moved to
California from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, after enrolling at UCLA. He contributed
several photographs to Wallace Berman's Semina magazine throughout the
50s and 60s, while working as a photographer for Charles and Ray Eames. After a
two-decade hiatus, Brittin returned to photography in the 1990s, and also began
making video works.
CHARLES BRITTIN: WEST AND SOUTH
ISBN 978-3-7757-2836-2
Hardback, 9.5
x 13 inches, 216 pages, 150 duotone
U.S. $60.00
CDN $66.00
Published by Hatje Cantz
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