Statement
Inspired by the 1960s Civil Rights Movement and the deepening interest in America’s multicultural history, the Center for Documentary Expression and Art (CDEA), an independent, non-profit organization, creates, supports, and promotes documentary expression, documentary art, and documentary studies through programs that honor the cultural, spiritual, and ethnic identities of our nation’s diverse population. CDEA also carries out original, statewide, K-16 education-outreach activities, featuring artists/scholars-in-residence who guide K-16 students to explore Utah’s history, diversity, social life, and environmental/ecological challenges through place-based education programs.
Artist's Bio
Matt Herron (1931–2020) became a photojournalist in 1962. Based in Mississippi in the early 1960s, Herron covered the Civil Rights struggle for Life, Look, Time, and Newsweek magazines and for the Saturday Evening Post. He also provided photographs and support for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In 1963, he founded and directed the Southern Documentary Project, a team of five photographers who attempted to document the process of social change in the South. His recent book, Mississippi Eyes, recounts the history and displays photographs from that project.
Herron’s images have appeared in virtually every major photography magazine in the world and in 1965 he won the World Press Photo Contest for a photograph of a Mississippi cop beating a five-year-old child. A graduate of Princeton, Herron’s work is in the permanent collections of the George Eastman House, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the High Museum, and the Smithsonian Institution.
