During the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) close to 3,000 young, idealistic Americans formed the Abraham Lincoln Brigade to join an international effort to fight against Franco’s fascists, who were supported by Hitler and Mussolini. When these young people returned home, they were labeled communists and blacklisted.
Opening on Saturday, April 30, at New York University’s King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center (located at 53 Washington Square South) is an exhibition of black-and-white photographs entitled “The Front Lines of Social Change: Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade”. The exhibition features 40 documentary photographs and archival collages by Richard Bermack, highlighting surviving members of the Brigade’s volunteers.
The exhibition will be on display through May 31. For further information call 212.998.3650 or log on to www.nyu.edu/kjc.
Bermack, an award-winning labor journalist, says, “What attracted me to these people was their vibrancy. This particular set of people was able to form a community around their experience. They risked their lives for each other and went through these really emotional experiences in terms of intensive commitment. Then they came back, and it continued.”
Pictured in their 70’s and 80’s, these men and women still look at if they are ready to take on the world. The “Lincolns” are represented as models for an old-fashioned but durable style of political action that stays true to its spirit without being attached to winning or losing any particular fight.
A native of Berkeley, California, Bermack has won the Media Alliance’s Meritorious Award for Photography and the International Labor Communicators Associaton/AFL-CIO’s prestigious Max Steinbock Award for labor journalism.