In A Time of Panthers: Early Photographs

Jeffrey Henson Scales

In A Time of Panthers is a collection of Jeffrey Henson Scales’s earliest photographs of the Black Panthers in Oakland, and the People’s Park riots in Berkeley, which he made as a teenager.

Few photographers had the insider access Oakland native Jeffrey Henson Scales did around the Black Panther Party in the late 1960s. Capturing intimate portraits and protest images of the organization and its leaders in a time of societal upheaval, Scales’s archive lay dormant and forgotten for some 50 years. Then, in 2018, when his mother died and the contents of the family home were sorted, the negatives were discovered.

Artist Bios

Jeffrey Henson Scales

Jeffrey Henson Scales is a photographer, New York Times photo editor, and a New York University professor of photojournalism. He began making photographs at age 11, after his parents gave him 30 years’ worth of LIFE Magazine and a Leica camera. He has since spent more than five decades as a documentary and commercial photographer.

His documentary photographs have been exhibited at museums throughout the United States, and have appeared in numerous photography magazines, books, and anthologies. His photographs are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the City Museum of New York, the George Eastman House, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Weisman Museum of Art, the Museum of Art at Newfields, and the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Henson Scales is also an award-winning editor who curates The New York Times photography column, Exposures, and is co-editor of the annual Year in Pictures special section.

His ongoing project is entitled The Archive Project, in which his archiving team is digitizing and cataloging over 50 years of his personal and professional photographs, including images from the upcoming book In A Time of Panthers: Early Photographs.

Photo Credit: Chad Batka

Organizations

Claire Oliver Gallery
Photoville

Photoville is a New York-based non-profit organization that works to promote a wider understanding and increased access to the art of photography and visual storytelling by producing a free annual festival, amplifying impactful narratives, and connecting artists to a wide global audience by activating accessible public spaces via large scale exhibitions.

Proudly devoted to cultivating strategic partnerships and creative collaborations with community spirit, UPI approaches its mission of cultivating a wide, diverse audience for powerful photographic narratives by working closely with visual artists, city agencies, nonprofit organizations and educators worldwide to create new exhibition and public art opportunities that showcase thought-provoking, challenging, and exceptional photography. For more information about Photoville visit, www.photoville.com