Text & Photo:
Julie Schwietert Collazo
**
This is possible because of them.
It was hard not to identify with them as I walked through the exhibit, yet the tears spilling out of the corner of each eye felt ridiculous; Francisco and I have never had to face the kinds of challenges the Lovings faced. And the reason for our relative ease in moving through the world together, often noticed but rarely ridiculed as an interracial couple, is because the Lovings did the hard work for us.
In 1958, Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter, both from the same town in Virginia, went to Washington, D.C. to get married as it was illegal for them to do so in their home state, thanks to miscegenation laws. Virginia authorities weren’t about to let the Lovings get away with tying the knot elsewhere but living as a married couple in their state; one night, acting on an anonymous tip, police dragged the couple out of their bed and charged the Lovings with threatening the Commonwealth’s “peace and dignity” with their mixed-race relationship.
Thus began a chain of legal events that would eventually culminate in the Supreme Court case, Loving v. Virginia (which you can read about in the excellent book, May It Please the Court). The justices ruled unanimously in favor of the Lovings, overturning all previous decisions made in Virginia circuit courts.
“The Loving Story,” an exhibit currently on display at the International Center of Photography in New York, presents the work of Grey Villet, a LIFE photographer who was covering the Lovings on a two week long assignment that resulted in a short photo essay in the magazine. There’s a lovely narrative of the backstory of that assignment, written by Villet’s wife, that was published by the New York Times’ Lens blog on January 18; that narrative is accompanied by many of the photos in the ICP exhibit.
What Barbara Villet writes, and what is evident to the point of being achingly palpable in the photos, is that the Lovings were deeply in love with one another and with their three children. There are stories in the photos that are suggested but not fully spoken and never will be (despite, I suspect, a forthcoming documentary), as both Richard and Mildred are now dead.* Knowing that those stories were trapped there forever broke the part of me that wants to preserve everything that feels important. I wanted to crawl into the photos and move the camera away, as if their lives could just keep going on.
The exhibit, comprised of such a small number of photos, left me wanting more, much more. I wanted to take in every image that existed of them, of their children, of their families (and what about their families, who seem, in the photos, to approve of and support their marriage?). I wanted to know more of their story before and after the landmark Supreme Court decision. I wanted to know about Grey Villet, too. How had the LIFE assignment that resulted in this collection of photos impacted him, maybe even changed him? This wanting, however, shouldn’t be read as a criticism. It did what the best exhibits do: compelled me to think and sent me back out into the world to learn more.
*Richard died in the 1970s when a drunk driver crashed into the car he and Mildred were traveling in. Mildred survived, though she lost an eye in the accident. She died in 2008.
**
Exhibit Information
Venue: International Center of Photography, 1133 Sixth Avenue (at 43rd St.), New York, New York
Dates: January 20-May 6, 2012
Cost: General admission is $12; student/senior admission is $8; entrance contribution is voluntary on Fridays from 5-8 PM.
