Photojournalist, Social Documentarian, Movement Propagandist: The Photography of Matt Herron.

When Matt Herron moved to Mississippi with his family in 1963, he thought of himself as wearing three hats. As a photojournalist, he was beginning to see his career take off and hoped to win assignments from editors he knew in New York by submitting picture story ideas from the heart of the Civil Rights struggle. Influenced by several formative meetings with the well-known documentary photographer Dorothea Lange, Herron also hoped to document the process of social change that was beginning to disrupt deeply ingrained patterns of life in both black and white communities of the Deep South. To this end, he organized a team of photographers in the Spring of 1964 to follow this process through one of the most tumultuous summers in Civil Rights history. Finally, as a pacifist and political radical, Herron was personally drawn to the cause of racial justice and eagerly committed his cameras to the organizing work of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Mississippi and other venues of the South.

How well did these three hats fit one head? That is the subject of a new photography exhibition at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

The exhibit will be available for viewing at North Gate Hall, Monday-Friday, from August 29- December 1, 2011