In 1966 photographer Bob Fitch set up a formal portrait of Martin Luther King. Fitch was working for King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (for “five bucks a week and room and board,” he says), and the photo was to be taken at the SCLC headquarters in Atlanta. King’s office was too dark, but Fitch spotted something in it he wanted for his shot: a picture of Gandhi hanging near King’s desk. He carried the picture to a light-filled front office, hung it near another desk, had King stand nearby, and suggested that he “make himself comfortable.” King, holding a pen in his right hand, folded his arms, turned his head slightly to the left, and looked past the photographer. In the best-known of the resulting photos, King is seen in near profile juxtaposed with the Gandhi image. It’s remarkable on two counts: Gandhi’s presence, with all it implies, his downcast eyes a counterpoint to King’s steady gaze, and King’s crossed-arm stance–an atypical posture, more self-contained and contemplative than his usual public image.
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That photo appeared on the jacket cover of King’s posthumously published autobiography (1998) and has attracted a lot of attention over the years. Fitch, who has the negative and claims ownership of the image, says it has appeared on everything from posters to mouse pads, and he’s usually been contacted and paid a fee. But in the autobiography’s credits, the cover photo was attributed to another civil-rights-era photographer, Charles Moore, and that’s led to some confusion. Chicago sculptor Erik Blome, for example, didn’t know Fitch had taken the photo when he used it as his inspiration for the bronze statue of King he made in 2003 for Rocky Mount, North Carolina. The statue made national news when some citizens objected that it didn’t look like King and the town took it down. (I wrote about it here October 14, 2005.) Rocky Mount has since changed its mind: the statue was recently returned to its site, and Blome says he’s sending Fitch an honorarium.
Dwight re-created the image as a 15-inch bronze sculpture and believed that his rendering would be the basis for the 28-foot real thing. He thought Yixin was being hired simply to do the artisan’s job of stone carving, which he would supervise, and that he’d be credited with the finished monument. But last December, on a visit to the foundation office, Dwight says he discovered that Yixin had replaced him as the artist of record and had been allowed to alter the image. “They had pictures, and it looked horrible,” he says, adding that the foundation still wanted him to be associated with the project but severed ties when he expressed “vociferous” criticism, including a 13-page report detailing the ways in which Yixin had gone wrong.
