Description:
Governor Wallace at draped podium on stage flanked by three men on each side (one on furthest left holding a guitar) and two men in front of stage in foreground
Label Text:
This image of the infamous segregationist, Alabama Governor George Wallace, during his 1968 campaign for the United States presidency was taken during Liebling's long and fruitful time in Minnesota. The presidential campaign of 1968 was particularly fraught in Minnesota, as two politicians connected with the state, Eugene McCarthy and Hubert H. Humphrey, were both vying for the Democratic nomination. Humphrey won the nomination during the Chicago Democratic Convention, where demonstrators clashed with National Guardsmen, Many believed that this confrontation contributed to Humphrey's defeat by Richard Nixon.
The framing of this image, with the close grouping of Wallace's aides, all soberly dressed white men, surrounding the laconically gesticulating candidate, epitomizes the separation between Wallace and his audience, and highlighting Liebling's ambivalence toward the process of electoral politics in America. In making these images, Liebling has said: "My photographs tried to find the politicians at their most wary, most vulnerable, and perhaps most truthful moments. I wanted the photographs to reveal the person through stance and stare, when he or she was most reflective or off guard, in order to measure the person and the event unfolding."
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=SC+1988.16.7 |
