This Far and No Further: Photographs Inspired by the Voting Rights Movement (Focus on American History)

About this book

Standing on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma Alabama in 2017 photographer William Abranowicz was struck by the weight of historical memory at this hallowed site of one of the civil rights movements defining episodes: 1965s Bloody Sunday when Alabama police officers attacked peaceful marchers. To Abranowiczs eye Selma seemed relatively unchanged from its apperance in the photographs Walker Evans made there in the 1930s. That coupled with an awareness of renewed voter suppression efforts at state and federal levels inspired Abranowicz to explore the living legacy of the civil and voting rights movement through photographing locations landscapes and individuals associated with the struggle from Rosa Parks and Harry Belafonte to the barn where Emmett Till was murdered. The result is This Far and No Further a collection of photographs from Abranowiczs journey through the American South. Through symbolism metaphor and history he unearths extraordinary stories of brutality heroism sacrifice and redemption hidden within ordinary American landscapes underscoring the crucial necessity of defendingand exercisingour right to vote at this tenuous moment for American democracy.