CAPTURING THE ICONS OF ACTIVISM
PHOTOGRAPHER AND AUTHOR KK Ottesen’s most recent book, Activist: Portraits of Courage (Chronicle Books, published October 2019, 7 x 9 ¼ in, 300pp, hardcover $35), contains the words and portraits of 41 American activists. The photographs represent activists, ranging in age from 21 to 94, who have been engaged in a broad range of issues from a variety of perspectives. It's why in this volume, which presents first-person interviews alongside the black-and-white portraits, you’ll not only find longtime icons—Harry Belafonte and Angela Davis, for example—but also new faces, such as Indivisible co-founders Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg.
The project grew out of Ottesen’s longtime interest in activism and the roles people play in an active democracy. “In recent years, as the discourse has frayed and with all the crazy stuff that’s happening, I thought about the importance of the people who stand up to put things back on course,” she says.
More specifically, she wanted to understand what compels someone to act. “What kind of individual stands up and makes other people uncomfortable? Most of us are hardwired not to stand up but to be nice and polite,” she notes. It wasn’t just why people took action that
