Rebels with a Cause invites viewers to consider how visual culture shapes historical memory and how images circulate between activism, art, and personal archive. Rebels with a Cause presents Jean-Pierre Laffont’s deeply personal photobook on a formative period of American history, when counterculture ignited a series of cultural revolutions that continue to shape our lives today.
As the first French photographer to dedicate his life to documenting America from the 1960s to 1980s, Jean-Pierre Laffont’s iconic photographs offer an outsider’s perspective on the phenomena of a generation defined by their drive to question established norms. In 1965, Jean-Pierre Laffont arrived in the United States as an immigrant with a camera, allowing him to document the counterculture up close.
Borne out of growing opposition to capitalism and materialism, the counterculture movement was a massive youth-driven insurrection that shaped the identity and collective memory of America. This latest project is a kaleidoscopic celebration of rebellions, including the Vietnam War protests, the civil rights movement, women’s liberation, the LGBTQ+ movement, hippies, religions, and gangs. These photographs give viewers a window into the groups that populated a period that indelibly altered the course of American history.
Laffont’s latest book, Rebels with a Cause, includes over one hundred and fifty photographs as well as a foreword by Pulitzer Prize finalist Lucy Sante which serves as the foundation of the next exhibition. Organized by themes, Rebels with a Cause contains paragraphs devoted to specific movements including Black Style: Trailblazing Changes in Fashion, Gangs: Arousing City Phenomenon, LGBTQ+: The Birth of a Movement, Spiritual Groups: Faith in the Streets, and other culturally significant shifts, including the protests that took over streets and campuses across America.
The exhibition uses visual sequencing to allow viewers to encounter the work as both art and historical artifact.
