Stephen Shames' Black Panther Photographs in London

Stephen Shames, Panthers on parade, Copyright Stephen Shames, courtesy of Amar Gallery

By MARK BLOCH August 19, 2024

This exhibition, the first of its kind in in Europe, features over 100 rarely seen iconic pictures from Stephen Shames, photographer and archivist of the world’s largest archive of Black Panther related imagery. If the day to day workings of that group isn’t enough, in addition to dramatic shots of Bobby Seale and Huey Newton are included civil rights leaders and activists like Martin Luther King Jr, Maya Angelou, James Baldwin and Angela Davis.

The Panthers’ grassroots revolution for the people and by the people was documented by Shame for several years, preserving political and pop culture history, its complicated spirit and the lingering legacy of what was then going on. Shames has said the Panthers’ historically unique “approach electrified a generation of Black youth.” 

Stephen Shames, Angela Davis, press conference following her release on bail during her trial in February 1972, Copyright Stephen Shames, courtesy of Amar Gallery

Shames was a white student from Cambridge, Massachusetts at the University of California, Berkeley when he became attracted to politics. Six months after they first founded the Black Panther Party for Self Defense in October 1966, at the Spring Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam, an event in San Francisco, Shames, who is now 77, had just turned 20 and made a fateful decision. He seeked out the Black Panther leaders then visited their party headquarters in Oakland, California, and showed them some of his recent photographs. Bobby Seale, co-founder and main spokesman of the BPP, liked them and used some of the pics in the Black Panther newspaper. Though Shames was still finding his way as a photographer, Seale invited him to be their official photographer: to live behind the scenes and attend private party meetings with unprecedented access. That’s how he became the official documentarian of the Black Panthers from 1967 to 1973. “I was living in the moment,” Shames said.

Seale and Shames later co-authored a book Power to the People: The World of the Black Panthers, 2016, which also included Seale at work on his Oakland Democratic Party mayoral campaign. In that election with an unusually high voter turnout, Seale came in second in a field of nine with 20% of the vote. The photographer’s relationship with Seale and the trust they had developed was responsible for private, intimate moments that are seen in their book as well as in this exhibition.

Stephen Shames, Black Panthers' food program, Copyright Stephen Shames, courtesy of Amar Gallery

Shames also co-authored a book a couple years ago with with former Black Panther Ericka Huggins: Comrade Sisters: Women of the Black Panther Party, 2022, about the crucial role played by women in the group.  Its figureheads were male, but with more than 65 percent of the group’s membership female, Elaine Brown, Kathleen Cleaver, and Huggins did their share of leading from the front lines.

Shames thus became an artist of the revolution who not only documented what was occurring, but became known for bold and empathetic photo essays that now shine a bright light on the  humanity and compassion of a revolutionary ethos that was then being misunderstood as it unfolded in front of a turbulent country.   

Stephen Shames, Black Panther Founder Bobby Seale running for mayor in 1972, Copyright Stephen Shames, courtesy of Amar Gallery

The Panther experience led Shames to six decades as a photo-journalist in which he photographed what he saw after his Oakland experiences. “The Panthers taught me how to photograph a world,” he said about his learning to act instinctively. “If you think about a photo, then the moment is gone.” He explained, “Street shooters have to go with the flow and trust their instincts.

“I try to capture the emotion,” the non-techy shooter has said. The change from film to digital did not affect his approach. “The only difference is with digital you can immediately see if you got it. With film, you had to wait.” But his approach to what he chronicles remains the same.

Stephen Shames, Bobby Seale at the first national United Front Against Fascism conference in Oakland, July 1969, Copyright Stephen Shames, courtesy of Amar Gallery

The London gallerist Amar came to Brooklyn, Shames’ home base, to look at photographs and together they curated the images for the exhibit which Amar then designed. “I trusted Amar and he did a fantastic job,” said Shames.

Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton founded the legendary Black Panther Party in Oakland in 1966, unwilling to accept second-class citizenship. By adopting openly armed patrols in “copwatching” practices to monitor police behavior, totally legal under California’s gun laws at the time—the 1967 Mulford Act repealed the right to publicly bear firearms in California in response to Panther activities—it was a continuation of an effort that began originally as an effort to end policies prohibiting black people from purchasing real estate.

Stephen Shames, Bobby Seale at 1968 rally, Copyright Stephen Shames, courtesy of Amar Gallery

During this time, redlining excluded Black families from home ownership. Then in 1940, when California Highway 17—now Interstate 880— was completed, a wide path through Oakland’s African American communities was bulldozed to create space for the route. Finding themselves without access to downtown, these neighborhoods were stripped of necessary economic connections to the commerciality in the important Bay Area city’s center, disrupting lives. It became the center of the storm of numerous demonstrations, from peaceful protests to general strikes to all-out riots. Excessive force by the Oakland Police Department made tensions worse. Eventually the Panthers marched upon the California State Capitol in Sacramento—armed with guns and wearing berets and militaristic uniforms adorned with their distinctive logo. A man named Emory Douglas was the party’s visual identity master. He and Shames were featured together in a 2016 exhibit at Steven Kasher Gallery in New York.

The Panther “10 Point platform” and their more than 60 “survival programs” are fascinating to consider today, with the Black Panthers having provided essentials like food, medicine, clothing, and transportation to residents in a time of dire need. The BP Party increasingly emphasized not only medical care via People’s Free Medical Clinics that including screening for sickle cell anemia, but free eye and dental care, a People’s Free Ambulance Service and community-based activism and voter registration drives as well everything from legal aid, food cooperatives and employment referral to plumbing, pest control and home maintenance programs. A child development center and their Free Breakfast for Children Program supplemented a school that acquired a top notch reputation. Their less headine-grabbing, non-controversial work of feeding children and educating the next generation became a blueprint for the future, leading with community over chaos. 

Stephen Shames, Angela Davis, Copyright Stephen Shames, courtesy of Amar Gallery

“The Panthers did not encourage hatred,” Shames has said, “They gave purpose to the aimless, angry youth who loitered on street corners. The Panthers molded these young people into disciplined, hard workers.”

Meanwhile a fearful FBI director J. Edgar Hoover vowed that 1969 would be the last year of the Panthers’ existence, making it a principal target of the bureau’s illegal Cointelpro initiative. In December of ’69, that year, Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were killed and several were wounded in a planned FBI-orchestrated raid with Chicago police collusion on Hampton’s apartment in Chicago. A feature film about the incident, Judas and the Black Messiah. was released in 2021.

Bobby Seale once said, “the true legacy of my Black Panther Party” is that “we must organize people’s programs and evolve greater participatory community control democracies, void of racist, bigoted, and chauvinistic practices.” Such a thing might still come to pass as this exhibition pushes out examples of photography as art that rise to another level, perhaps inspiring action in those that see it. WM

Black Panthers & Revolution: The Art of Stephen Shames
Amar Gallery
29th May, 2025 – 6th July, 2025

Amar Gallery

Kirkman House, Lower Ground

12-14 Whitfield Street

London, W1T 2RF