Turbulent America

• ©Jean-Pierre Laffont
  Bronx, New York City, NY. July 20th 1972.
  Savage Skulls members walk the sidewalk shoulder to shoulder
• ©Jean-Pierre Laffont
  Miami, FL. August 23rd 1972.
  Demonstrators wear costumes and makeup, perform scenes of death and suffering in opposition to the Vietnam War, outside of the 1972 30th Republican Convention, during President Richard Nixon's reelection campaign
• ©Jean-Pierre Laffont
  Manhattan, New York City, NY. January 23rd, 1974.
  Surrounded by bodyguards, Muhammad Ali shows off in front of journalists at the New York studio of ABC, before the second boxing match between him and Joe Frazier
• ©Jean-Pierre Laffont
  Middlefield, CT. August 1st and 2nd 1970.
  Two young people stand on the edge of the water at the Powder Ridge Festival
• ©Jean-Pierre Laffont NYC, April 29th 1974

Protests, demonstrations, daily life on the streets: known as a distinguished chronicler, Jean-Pierre Laffont documented the USA from the sixties to the eighties. A retrospective of the Leica photograher’s work is now on display in Mestre, Italy.

1965 – a country undergoing great changes: when Jean-Pierre Laffont (born 1935) arrived in New York he found the city in a desolate situation. In the mid sixties he turned his eye not only to the metropolis, but to the whole country, that was about to undergo deep political and societal changes: “It looked like everyone was in the streets protesting.

In the seventies, the American dream seemed to be disintegrating. The American people no longer trusted their government,” the US American photographer with French-Algerian roots remembers. A renowned photo journalist, he became a chronicler of a whole generation, reporting on the rise of the Black Power movement and the Ku Klux Klan, as well as the end of the Vietnam war and the hippie movement.

According to Laffont, the current exhibition represents “a personal and historical portrait of a country I have always viewed critically but affectionately, and to which I bear immense gratitude”.

Organised by Eliane Laffont and Elisabetta Da Lio, in collaboration with Photo Op, the exhibition can be seen at the Centro Culturale Candiani in Mestre, Venince, up until May 30.

Further information available at: www.culturavenezia.it