Matt Herron

(Rochester, New York, 1931 - )

American

Matt Herron organized the Southern Documentary Project, an organization of five photographers who captured life in Mississippi during the pivotal summer of 1964. While employed by Kodak in Rochester, New York, Herron learned the craft of photography under the tutelage of Minor White. Herron moved with his wife and young children to Jackson, Mississippi, and set to work photographing educational and cultural activities during the Freedom Summer, a period when thousands of volunteers, many from the North, descended on Mississippi to register African Americans to vote. In the 1970s, Herron turned his focus to writing, publishing in Smithsonian magazine, and used his camera to promote in animal rights, photographing and serving as crew on the first two Greenpeace anti-whaling voyages. In the 1980s, Herron became active in the American Society of Media Photographers and the Media Photographers Copyright Agency. He serves as the director of Take Stock, a stock photography company specializing in civil and migrant rights images. Herron published Mississippi Eyes: The Story and Photography of the Southern Documentary Project in 2014. He work is in the collection of many institutions, including the George Eastman House, the Smithsonian Institution, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, and the Shomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

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