Photography archive of Matt Herron containing prints, negatives, and contact sheets spanning his career from the 1950s through 1990s. Also included are some files pertaining to Herron's publications, correspondence, and work with photography organizations.

Matt Herron (1931-2020) was born in Rochester, New York. He graduated from Princeton University in 1953 with a degree in English and studied the Middle East at University of Michigan. As a conscientious objector during the Korean War, he taught at a Quaker school in Ramallah on the West Bank. While in the Middle East, he met and married Jeannine Hull. After returning to Rochester, he briefly worked as a corporate photographer for Kodak and was mentored by photographer Minor White. He began to take photography assignments for Life and Look as civil rights sit-ins were occurring in Tennessee and North Carolina. Following an arrest for attempting to integrate an amusement park in Maryland, the Herrons moved to Jackson, Mississippi, in 1963. There, Herron worked as a photojournalist for major news magazines; took documentary photographs of the American South; and took propaganda photographs in service of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and other civil rights organizations. In the summer of 1964, Herron organized the Southern Documentary Project to record civil rights efforts in voter registration and education. Photographers George Ballis and Danny Lyon joined and Dorothea Lange served as an informal project advisor. That year, Herron won the World Press Photo Contest for his picture of a Mississippi highway patrolman taking an American flag from a five-year-old Black child. During the 1970s, Herron began writing articles for Smithsonian and other publications. He was a photographer for the first two Greenpeace anti-whaling voyages, as well as Sea Shepherd's voyage to St. Lawrence to disrupt harp seal hunts. He also photographed the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt in Washington, DC. In the 1980s and 1990s, Herron became active with the American Society of Media Photographers and later served as its president from 1993 to 1995. This role led to work on photography copyright, electronic image exchange, and photography business practices. He was the founder of Take Stock: Images of Change, which sought to disseminate photographs of social movements from photographers including himself, Ballis, Ernest Lowe, Ivan Massar, Art Rogers, Maria Varela, and Bob Fitch.

42 Linear Feet (57 manuscript boxes, 1 half-box, 56 flat boxes, 1 card box, 2 oversize map folders)

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