In the late 60’s I became involved in the anti-war protests and women’s liberation movement. I had also recently acquired a Pentax 35mm camera and began taking it with me to the many demonstrations and other events happening, mostly in New York City. Some of these photos were used by the underground press at that time through Liberation News Service and NY Newsreel. I also began writing songs and performing around the same time. By the early 70s, all of my attention was focused on music and I stopped my photographic career.
About five years ago, I began getting requests for photos I had taken at the Miss America Beauty Pageant protest on Sept. 7, 1968, which I had participated in. The negatives were stored in an old shoe box in my closet. Channel 13 did a series called “Makers” and printed and used some my photos in their segment on the Women’s Liberation Movement. More recently, I was interviewed for a film about Newsreel where the subject of my still photos came up. The filmmaker, now my friend, lent me a scanner that converts negative film into digital images, and Presto! Here is the result. I have well over 2,000 images that have been a delight for me to see, most of them for the first time. Some of them, I have no recollection of taking. In any case, I thought more people might be interested in seeing them, as well, so here is one way to do so.
I am still making music, but recently bought a “real” camera. My iPhone has been my go to camera up to now.
If you’d like to check out my music, here’s a link to my music website.
EXHIBITIONS
2023
February 2 – May 27, 2023: Walls Turned Sideways Are Bridges, curated by william cordova and Maria Vickles, African-American Research Library & Cultural Center, Ft. Lauderdale, FL -
2022
October 7 – January 22, 2023: The Salem Witch Trials: Reckoning and Reclaiming, The New York Historical Society & Library, NYC
September 28 - December 17, 2022: Wrongs & Rights. A Look Back at the Fight for Reproductive Rights at The Rudin Family Gallery at BAM Strong, 651 Fulton St., Brooklyn, NY.
May 1 – August 27, 2022: Movements of the 60’s Through the Eyes of a Revolutionary Working Class Feminist Photographer/Musician, The American Labor Museum, Haledon, NJ:
March 22 - June 12, 2022: Bev Grant Photography: 1968-1972, Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery at Reed College, Portland OR.
February 13 – March 26, 2022: Struggling Toward a Better World: Bev Grant Photography 1968-1972, Old Stone House at Washington Park: Brooklyn, NY
2021
December 5, 2021: Resistance, The Bunker, the collection of Beth Rudin DeWoody, West Palm Beach, FL
December 1, 2021: Bev Grant Photography: 1968-1972, exhibit & book launch, Books&Books, Coral Gables, FL.
2019
April 2019: part of Women’s Liberation collection in Activist New York at The Museum for the City of New York, NYC
2018
September 7, 2018: Bev Grant Photography, OSMOS Gallery, NYC