It is 1958 and Martin Luther King Jr is arrested in Montgomery, Alabama. Now it is the 1960s and King is in Birmingham, Alabama; and, of course, at the March for Jobs and Freedom in Washington DC. All these pivotal moments in the American civil rights movement are given stunning visual immediacy at Human Rights Human Wrongs, a photographic exhibition of more than 250 original press prints.

Using as a leitmotif the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, whose 30 articles are displayed at London’s Photographers’ Gallery, the exhibition considers the value of photo-reportage to civil and human rights on several continents between 1945 and the early 1990s.

There are emblems of apartheid in South Africa: The Wall Between, an unpainted wooden wall (1961) and a sign on a Durban beach (1977). In Kenya, there are photos from the Mau Mau uprising, of subjects being taken to Langata and of Mau Mau worriers dressed in fur as protection against the cold in the high mountains. In Algeria, on the eve of independence in 1962, 2,000 Muslims mass into a square. Some of the most striking African images concern the young man who stole the sword of King Baudouin I during a procession in Leopoldville, Republic of Congo, in 1960.

The Photographers’ Gallery

London W1

Turning to the Middle East, there is a 1955 Welcome to Gaza sign. In 1982, we see armed men on the West Bank. In Asia, there is striking coverage of the Vietnam conflict. Closer to home, in Northern Ireland a 1981 photograph shows a man in Belfast holding a sign that says ‘Support the hunger strikers. Sound your horn’.

Some of the greatest human rights abuses were, of course, committed during the second world war. A 1940 print shows corpses left in front of houses in the Warsaw ghetto, while a display of Life magazine excerpts show concentration camp atrocities.

The exhibition, drawn from the photography agency Black Star’s collection of 20th century photo-reportage, constitutes a stunning historical record. Visitors can also hear excerpts from speeches by Martin Luther King Jr and JFK’s address about the press in 1961.

The exhibition runs until 6 April and is free.

Nicholas Goodman is a sub-editor at the Law Society Gazette

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