Ken Cockrel at WSU
Artist
Leni Sinclair
(German-American, born 1940)
Date1965
MediumArchival inkjet print
DimensionsImage Size: 16 × 12 1/2 in. (40.6 × 31.8 cm)
Frame Size: 21 1/4 × 17 1/4 in. (54 × 43.8 cm)
ClassificationsPhotograph
Credit LinePurchase, 2024
Object numberUAC7830.03
Description Leni Sinclair (b. 1940) is a storied photographer who emerged as de facto documentarian of the Detroit counterculture of the 1960s and 70s. Embracing the cultural transformation and revolutionary spirit of the era, Sinclair’s snapshots reveal a range of social and political activities—she has described herself in these contexts as an anthropological “participant observer.” She is known for her charged portraits of musicians and artists as well as social justice organizers and moments of everyday resistance to structures of violence and oppression.Born in what is now Kaliningrad, Russia and raised in East Germany, Sinclair immigrated to Detroit in 1959. She studied geography at Wayne State University and in 1963 co-founded the Red Door Gallery, an avant-garde studio and exhibition space near campus. The gallery’s ideological undercurrents and cooperative practices laid the foundation for the Detroit Artists Workshop, a radical arts collective founded the following year that would become an epicenter of community activism. In 1968, Sinclair, then-husband John Sinclair (both of whom were already under federal scrutiny ), and Pun Plamondon co-founded the White Panther Party in response to a call to action from the Black Panther Party; the WPP, later renamed the Rainbow People’s Party, distributed BPP literature throughout Michigan and organized in support of various antiracist and leftist causes.
The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, founded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, CA in 1966, articulated a ten-point platform and program that outlined their vision for a more free and just society; included were demands for housing, education, political self-determination, and an end to incarceration and violence against Black people. The Detroit chapter of the BPP, one of many civil rights and Black power organizations active in the city at the time, formed in 1968. Sinclair’s photograph Black Panthers in Detroit captures a scene from one of the group’s “Free Huey!” rallies which denounced the BPP founder’s wrongful incarceration. Here we see several BPP members—variously styled in leather, sunglasses, and black berets which became emblematic of the cause—stoically standing on the city sidewalk while bearing white flags depicting a lunging Black Panther. Three passersby do not explicitly acknowledge their presence (though the older white man appears disgruntled).
The photograph’s composition places Sinclair in the street behind a parked car, looking toward a background building with a honeycomb grate and polished marble walls. None of the BPP members meet the viewer’s gaze, underscoring their statue-like presence. Given that the Black Panthers were incessantly harassed and surveilled by law enforcement, perhaps this passivity was a pragmatic choice; physically disengaged until necessary, they stand silently to remind the city of ongoing injustice. The BPP members pictured here were making brave nonviolent statements, since in 1969 several notable BPP members were killed by police and the FBI (including Mark Clark and Fred Hampton, who had been asleep in his apartment).
During her decades-long career, Sinclair has shown her photographs nationally and internationally and her work continues to galvanize the community. In 2016, she received the Kresge Eminent Artist Award and in 2021, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit organized Leni Sinclair: Motor City Underground. As commentator Cary Loren notes in the former’s monograph:
“Photography is subversive,” wrote Roland Barthes, “not when it frightens, repels or even stigmatizes, but when it is pensive, when it thinks.” Leni’s work lies outside the personal or diaristic; her photo album is a thinking album for a generation in revolt, a story of the New Left and hippie culture, pioneering and experimental.
Written by Sarah Teppen
1 https://jacobin.com/2021/07/detroit-leni-sinclair-white-panther-party-mc5
2 https://www.detroitartistsworkshop.com/red-door-gallery/
3 https://jacobin.com/2021/07/detroit-leni-sinclair-white-panther-party-mc5
4 https://policing.umhistorylabs.lsa.umich.edu/files/original/
552759013ca96bd856dc69deff6c129140239c27.jpg
5 https://policing.umhistorylabs.lsa.umich.edu/s/detroitunderfire/
page/black-panther-party
6 Cary Loren, “When Photography is Revolution: Noes on Leni Sinclair,” in Leni Sinclair: 2016 Kresge Eminent Artist, ed. Sue Levytsky (Troy, MI: Kresge Foundation, 2016), 59.
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