Breach of Peace feature and slideshow on Newsweek.com
June 02, 2008
Eric Etheridge's Breach of Peace: Portraits of the 1961 Mississippi Freedom Riders is featured in the June issue of Newsweek.
"The publication of 'Breach of Peace' comes at a time when the mug shot has been gaining cultural currency, both as art and as tabloid fodder, as in last year's 'Least Wanted,' a collection of arrest photos from the 1870s to 1960s, and the celebrity mug shots that have become the signature feature of thesmokinggun.com. Most of these representations reveal the sitters when they have the least control over their own images. They have, after all, just been accused of a crime. The Freedom Rider mug shots are different. Rather than the lowest point in their subjects' lives, the photos mark what was for many of the riders their moment of greatest purpose, and their conviction in their actions shines through. 'Despite the fact that we may assume that whoever took the pictures was not a trained a photographer, the images are very powerful,' says Etheridge. 'Some of them are great portraits.'
Click here to read the article and view the slideshow.