From Vanity Fair · Lucy Sante · · 3m
Jean-Pierre Laffont's American rebels
A French photographer spent fifty years documenting American dissent, from antiwar protests to drag queens, showing the world a country the mainstream press ignored.
In brief
A French photographer spent fifty years documenting American dissent, from antiwar protests to drag queens, showing the world a country the mainstream press ignored. Laffont's photographs revealed to international audiences that America contained multitudes of resistance movements and subcultures that domestic media…
A French eye on America
Jean-Pierre Laffont spent over fifty years photographing the United States for French and international media, living in New York City since the 1960s with his wife and partner Eliane.
What America hid from itself
American news outlets promoted a narrative of progress and equality that was largely false. Foreign outlets covered stories the American press routinely buried.
Rebels with a cause
Laffont's collection documents dissent across the spectrum: antiwar protests, civil rights demonstrations, the Village People, the Savage Skulls, Bhagwan followers, and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.
Vietnam vets seize the Statue
Vietnam Veterans Against the War occupied the Statue of Liberty for three days in 1971, hanging the American flag upside down to protest the ongoing war.
Thirty thousand hippies crash a festival
The Powder Ridge Rock Festival in Connecticut was stopped by legal injunction in 1970 before it could start, but thirty thousand hippies arrived anyway and may have set a world record for bad trips.
The Savage Skulls weren't bikers
Most Americans imagined the Savage Skulls as a Southern California biker gang, but they were actually armed early adolescents from the South Bronx who rode the subway and fought drug dealers.
LGBTQ movement gets real coverage
Laffont gave more space to early LGBTQ activism in a few pages than mainstream American press gave it during the entire era when it was happening.
Gay boys handing out flowers
Laffont captured innocent-looking hippieish gay boys passing out flowers at early Pride events, showing the movement's peaceful origins.
Trans life on the Upper West Side
Laffont immersed himself in the life of a transgender house on the Upper West Side, something that would never have been covered in American media outside the underground press.
Bhagwan's followers in Oregon
Laffont documented the Bhagwanites at Rajneeshpuram in Antelope, Oregon, an intentional community founded by followers of the spiritual teacher Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.
The Warlock Shop in Brooklyn
Laffont photographed Wiccan practitioners at the Warlock Shop in Brooklyn, capturing a spiritual subculture that mainstream media ignored.
Ali versus Frazier's high fashion
At the 1974 Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier rematch at Madison Square Garden, Laffont captured the high baroque period of Black style with fur extravaganzas and high-crowned headgear.
A photojournalist's complete toolkit
Laffont mastered black and white, color, widescreen, aerial, combat-style, intimate, and narrative photography with the patience of a nature photographer and the composition of Velázquez.
Explaining America to the world
Laffont's mission was to explain the United States to the French and their friends, showing that America contained not just one alternative but an ever-expanding crowd of other Americas.
A big tent for all rebels
Laffont refrains from judging, admitting gays, feminists, Black bourgeoisie, streakers, Hare Krishnas, and the Village People into his big tent of American rebellion.
Fifty years of human comedy
Over half a century in America, Laffont compiled a rich and complex photographic record of the human comedy that is American rebellion and resistance.
The takeaway
Laffont's photographs revealed to international audiences that America contained multitudes of resistance movements and subcultures that domestic media routinely buried or overlooked.
