The MLK Murals of America

Half a century after his assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. remains a popular subject of street art in America’s black and low-income urban neighborhoods. Since the 1970s I have documented hand-painted images of the civil rights leader in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Detroit, among other places. I did not originally set out to document these murals and signs; rather, I just happened to keep finding them and photographing them until a collection formed.

My documentation of ghetto neighborhoods is based on re-photography. I ask myself what will happen to a building, to a mural, to an empty lot. Curiosity compels me to return to these sites. A single photograph of mine is a question posed in a world where things fade, are replaced, or destroyed. Sequences, notes, and recollections grow into stories.