1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows by Ai Weiwei & Allan H. Barr

Author:Ai Weiwei & Allan H. Barr
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2021-11-01T16:00:00+00:00

A real-life incident had been transformed into a media moment, and it took me some years to realize the full import of that. I was impressed by the journalistic commitment to independence and impartiality, and by the truth of the claim that in The New York Times one could read “All the News That’s Fit to Print.” It never occurred to me that one day I would have a chance to apply the experience I had now acquired. Twenty years later, in the face of brutality and censorship on the other side of the world, my photographic record would become all the more vital.

The confrontation between residents of the East Village and police was the last spasm of sustained violence I witnessed in New York City. But the photos I took of police beatings became part of the material record used by the New York Civil Liberties Union in its indictment of police brutality. One day in Washington Square, Norman Siegel, executive director of the NYCLU, gave me his card and told me that if the police knocked on my door I should call him, even if it was in the middle of the night.

After the Tompkins Square Park riot, I became interested in other protest movements. At a march in Manhattan demanding an increased budget for addressing AIDS-related issues, medical workers blocked traffic on a major street and resisted arrest so vigorously that it took four policemen to bundle a single protester into a squad car. That incident naturally triggered media attention. I remember seeing the artist Keith Haring, an active presence in the ACT UP movement, at the march that day. I photographed other events, too, including demonstrations against Operation Desert Storm, against police brutality, and for gay rights and the rights of the homeless, although those protests failed to gain much traction.

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