Biography of charles moore photographer

Jamie Carstairs, who manages the Historical Photographs of China Project, follows up  serendipitous events, leading to a rabbit hole, in which a ‘new’ nineteenth century China photographer was found.

‘Mr. C. F. Moore, in the service of the Customs at Ningpo, has been staying here in the same temple with us. He seems an enthusiastic photographer, and spends most of his time in taking views of the surrounding country. He has a sedan chair ingeniously contrived for his operations, which his coolies (sic) carry about the country wherever he goes. I hope to induce him to spare me a few views.’ So wrote Thomas Hanbury in a letter to his father when staying at the “Temple of Shih Douzar, about 40 miles from Ningpo” in October 1870. [1]

Following on from this intriguing snippet, I started working with the Royal BC Museum in Canada, identifying buildings and locations depicted in ninety-nine glass plate negatives by Charles Frederick Moore (Royal BC Museum ref: MS-3171) that they hold.  I was pleasantly surprised to see among them, three negatives which brought to mind prints made from them, being photographs taken in Zhapu (Chapu), a coastal town half way between Shanghai and Hangzhou. These prints are in an album in the Edward Bowra Collection: Bo01-044 (below) is off the negative with the Royal BC Museum reference J-00445. Bo01-045 is from negative J-00452. Bo01-046 is from J-00458.

Another Moore negative (Royal BC Museum ref: J-00444) is of a pagoda at the Changchun yuan (长春园; 長春園), the Garden of Everlasting Spring, at the Yuanming Yuan, the Old Summer Palace, Beijing – discussed and reproduced in Nick Pearce’s Photographs of Peking, China 1861-1908 (Edward Mellon Press, 2005), plate 31 and page 119. This rarely photographed and distinctive pagoda with a round top, stood until 1900. The

Charles Moore, a photojournalist who both chronicled and helped alter the course of history through extraordinary photographs that reflected the brutal reality of the civil rights movement in the South, has died. He was 79.

Moore died Thursday of natural causes at a nursing home in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., said his daughter Michelle Moore Peel.

From 1958 to 1965, he trained his lens on the unfolding drama of civil rights as a news photographer for the Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser and Life magazine.

His shockingly graphic images -- of police dogs attacking protesters or marchers being assaulted by powerful water hoses -- helped propel what had been a regional dispute onto the national stage.

As his photographs created national outrage, they quickened the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, according to John Kaplan, a University of Florida journalism professor who wrote his master’s thesis on Moore.

“He had the courage to stand up in the face of danger and let Americans know what was really happening, through his work,” Kaplan told The Times. “That is why he is an unsung hero.”

As Moore followed the struggle, he was known for his fearlessness and uncanny knack for capturing the most distressing images possible.

“To people who were really bigoted, I was the worst enemy, a Southern boy working for Life,” Moore told USA Today in 1991.

“I knew the South. . . . I also knew how to talk back to racists.”

The son of a Baptist minister, Moore was drawn to photographing the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., then a Baptist clergyman in Montgomery. After witnessing King’s charisma firsthand in 1958, Moore sought to cover him whenever possible.

“I knew that this was a man who was going to make a difference,” Moore said of King in the 2005 documentary “Charles Moore: I Fight With My Camera.” Moore had yet to realize that his pictures would also make a difference.

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American photographer (1931–2010)

Charles Lee Moore (March 9, 1931 – March 11, 2010) was an American photographer known for his photographs documenting the Civil Rights Movement. Probably his most famous photo is of Martin Luther King Jr.'s arrest for loitering on September 3, 1958. It is this photo that sparked Moore's involvement in the Civil Rights Movement.

Early life and education

Moore was born in 1931 in Hackleburg, Alabama. His father was a baptist minister. His mother died young. He has a younger brother, Jim, b. March 1936. After attending local schools, he served three years in the U.S. Marines as a photographer.

Afterward he used the GI Bill to study at the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, California. He returned to Alabama, finding work as a photographer with the jointly owned morning and afternoon newspapers, Montgomery Advertiser and Alabama Journal.

Career

In 1958, while working in Montgomery, Alabama, for the Montgomery Advertiser, he photographed an argument between the minister Martin Luther King Jr. and two policemen in Montgomery. His photographs were distributed nationally by the Associated Press, and published in Life.

From this start, Moore traveled throughout the South documenting the activities of the Civil Rights Movement. One of his most well-known photographs Birmingham, depicts demonstrators being attacked by firemen wielding high-pressure hoses.,U.S. SenatorJacob Javits, said that Moore's pictures "helped to spur passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964."

In 1962, Moore left the newspapers to start a freelance career. He worked for the Black Star picture agency, which sold much of his work to Life magazine.

Moore covered the Vietnam War and conflicts in Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Haiti. He left warfare to work in nature, fashion and travel photography, in addition to corporate work.

In 1989, Mo