Today’s featured photographer is Bud Lee. The esteemed photojournalist studied at the Columbia School of Fine Arts and the National Academy of Fine Arts in New York in the early 1960s before abandoning fine art and studio photography in favour of a more action-packed vocation. After joining the US Army in 1965 amid the war in Vietnam, he was assigned to Stars and Stripes as a photographer for the prestigious publication.
In 1966, the Department of Defense and the National Press Photographers Association named Lee the ‘US Military Photographer of the Year’. This early feat was impressive but a mere sign of things to come. The following year, Lee began working for Life magazine as a photojournalist and found himself in the right place at the right time during one of his very first assignments.
In July 1967, following the arrest, beating, and imprisonment of Black taxi driver John Smith, the city of Newark fell into a spiral of civil unrest resulting in the infamous riots in New Jersey’s largest city. As the streets descended into an urban battlefield of destruction and bloodshed, Lee was appointed to document the scenes as they unfolded.
Over five days of rioting, 26 people were killed by police gunfire, with hundreds more critically injured, thousands arrested, and millions of dollars in property damage incurred. The poignant collection of photographs Lee took over this period exposed the atrocities to the world.
At the time, Lee couldn’t conceive the influence his shots would have in the immediate aftermath of the riots, nor could he imagine their ongoing relevance. Most famously, Lee bore witness to the cold-blooded murder of Billy Furr, a 24-year-old who was shot in the back by two police officers after he was caught looting a store for beer. One of the iconic photos below shows a police officer standing over Furr’s body.
Lee’s photographs were featured in Life over the months following the riots, bringing unpalatable truths to the American public. These moments captured on film remain to this day a harrowing but vital reminder of an eminently dark corner of American history.
Schoolchildren frequently ask why history is important. In answer to such questions, knowledge of the past’s various atrocities and injustices allows us to learn from our mistakes and ensure events like those seen below never repeat themselves.
Thankfully, Lee’s photographs are to be further immortalised in The War Is Here: Newark 1967, a new photography book set to publish on May 22nd, 2023, via Ze Books. The book will feature an expansive collection of Lee’s photography from the Newark Riots, accompanied by a foreword from Honorable Ras J. Baraka, 40th Mayor of Newark, NJ and an essay by journalist Chris Campion.
Sadly, Bud Lee passed away in 2015, aged 74, but his legacy lives on as one of America’s most revered photojournalists of the 20th century.
