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The photographers Ruth-Marion Baruch and Pirkle Jones met at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute) in 1946, while attending the photography class taught by Ansel Adams. They were married three years later. The following decades were marked by the consolidation of the civil rights and the hippie movement, especially on the west coast of the US. The photographers’ interest in the hippies’ new ways of working and living led them to districts such as Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, which in 1967 was regarded as the origin and centre of the alternative flower power scene. For two years, Pirkle Jones also accompanied the houseboat community “Gate Five” in Sausalito, a partnership of dropouts and artists. At the end of the 1960s, Ruth-Marion Baruch pursued her aim to use her own series of photographs to challenge the one-dimensional representation of the Black Panther Party in the media. Although racial segregation was abolished in 1964, it remained anchored in politics, the legal system and the minds of many people. The Black Panthers, who had turned away from the non-violent civil rights movement of Martin Luther King, continued to oppose the on-going social oppression and exploitation, resulting in a biased and negative view of the group in the media.
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