Robert Houston: witness to injustice and social change – in pictures
The American photographer Robert Houston, who memorably documented the civil rights movement, poverty and homelessness in the United States, has died aged 86. Born in East Baltimore in 1935, he was inspired by his friend and fellow photographer Gordon Parks to start work for the Black Star agency and then at Life magazine, for which he notably covered the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968. Here is a selection of his photographs mainly from those years
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Robert Houston, a portrait from 2013.
Photograph: JM Giordano
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The Million Man March, a demonstration by African American men in Washington DC, 1995
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The photographer’s eldest daughter is shown in a photograph that was sold at auction to benefit the famine-gripped nascent state of Biafra, 1969
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A hustler at a pool hall, Pool Wilmington, Delaware, 1973
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An interracial couple, Boston, 1969
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Martin Luther King Jr delivering a speech at a fundraiser at Boston Garden, Boston, 1967
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Brothers, photographed in Houston’s home town of Baltimore, 1967
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A family at the Poor People’s Campaign, Washington DC, 1968, an effort to gain economic justice for the poor of the United States
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Young mechanics work on their car in Wilmington, Delaware, 1973
