Robert Houston
Robert Houston was a Baltimore based documentary photographer. Born in East Baltimore in 1935.
Houston lived among protestors of the Poor People’s Campaign in Washington, DC and photographed from a perspective that felt uniquely intimate – in his words to “photograph from the inside out.” These photographs were never published, overshadowed by Robert Kennedy’s assasSination in the summer of 1968.
Houston’s lens captured the harsh realities of poverty and race– and the people’s resilience to fight for betterment in the height of the Civil Rights movement.
On the left: Brothers, photographed in Houston’s home town of Baltimore (1967)
After Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968, Houston was
motivated to act. He took his camera
and documented the effects of deep
racial discrimination and impoverishment.
Houston’s lens captured the harsh realities of poverty and race– and the people’s resilience to fight for betterment in the height of the Civil Rights movement.
On the right: Poor People's Campaign (1968)
Houston’s early photo assignments with the Black Star and Life Magazine covered the freedom rallies in Baltimore and Boston and The Poor People’s Campaign in Resurrection City.
Night scene at campfire - Resurrection City, Washington, D.C. (1968)
“We could not refer to our role in art history, because we did not play a role in that history.”
— Kerry James Marshall