The Portable War Memorial 1968,

1972

The 1960s were a time of profound social change worldwide, as activists campaigned for environmental causes, the end to the United States’ invasion of Vietnam, and civil rights for marginalized groups. Image makers such as Ishiguro, Keinholz, and Parks used photography to capture watershed moments and critique systems of power. Parks’s portrait of a protestor at the 1963 March on Washington—a peaceful, interracial demonstration of more than 250,000 advocating for civil rights and economic opportunity—reflects the contributions of countless individuals in building social movements. Ishiguro’s photograph documents the collective frustration of the Zengakuren, Japan’s leftist student union, whose protests against the 1960 US-Japan Security Treaty (Anpo) led President Eisenhower to cancel his visit to Japan that year and helped pave the way for the Japanese prime minister’s resignation. Keinholz’s Portable War Memorial 1968 is based on his photomontage and sculpture installation of the same name, which skewered the US invasion of Vietnam and American consumerism. The artist remarked, “It is the viewer who brings the impact to the piece. Some may bring feelings of guilt for letting the country run away with such a stupid situation.”