By Steve Neavling
A new documentary examines the life and works of Ernest Withers, a popular civil rights photographer who turned out to be an FBI informant.
The Picture Taker explores the complicated question of whether Withers was a friend or foe of the civil rights movement.
Ernest Withers won over the trust of civil rights leaders, capturing some of the most iconic images of the civil rights era.
He snapped some of the storied photos from the time – Martin Luther King Jr. riding on one of the first integrated buses in Montgomery, the Little Rock school integration showdown and the dramatic moment in a Mississippi court room when Emmett Till’s great uncle pointed an accusing finger at the abductor of his great-nephew.
His presence was so ubiquitous and his photos so powerful that he won the trust of civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King, who considered Withers a friend.
Withers’ double life was exposed in 2010 by dogged Memphis reporter Marc Perrusquia, who exposed the photographer’s double life in the pages of the Commercial Appeal. But the story raised more questions than it answered because the FBI declined to turn over once-classified documents.
The documentary is directed by Emmy and Peabody winner Phil Bertelsen.
“The Picture Taker artfully plays with rendering the photographic image for the screen. It graphically alters Withers’s likeness, transforming pictures of him into telling animations and cutouts that pull him out of the background in which he so often dwelled and into the foreground,” The New York Times wrote.
