Protesting injustice is a powerful way for individuals to come together to create change. In the exhibition How We Stay Free at Tilt Institute for the Contemporary Image, photos by Mike Arrison, Harvey Finkle, Joe Piette, and Sunny Singh vividly capture past protests that have taken place in Philadelphia over the years, reminding visitors of the power of community.
From the gallery about the exhibition:
Following the widely publicized murders of George Floyd and other Black citizens by police, an unprecedented wave of public outcry swept the nation. Despite the pervasive uncertainty and restrictions imposed by the global COVID-19 pandemic, Philadelphians organized and sustained mass protests, taking to the streets to emphatically demand racial justice, police accountability, and structural reform. Later that same year, the tragic shooting death of Walter Wallace Jr. by police officers in the West Philadelphia neighborhood of Cobbs Creek further underscored these systemic issues. His family had called 911 seeking assistance for a mental health crisis, only for the encounter to escalate fatally, tragically illustrating the severe gaps in the community’s support and emergency response systems.
Inspired by the energy generated from these events, West Philadelphia residents Fajr Muhammad and Christopher Rogers published How We Stay Free: Notes On A Black Uprising. This project is not merely a book but a dynamic, living archive of community resistance, featuring powerful, multi-modal contributions from a diverse coalition of artists, writers, poets, and scholars who were active participants in the struggle. This exhibition, which shares the same title, serves as an essential visual and experiential archive. It documents the work initiated by the authors, alongside the tireless efforts of local organizations, grassroots collectives, and community-based activists. Philadelphia’s legacy of civil disobedience is both deep and enduring, stretching from the national Black Lives Matter protests to localized calls for Palestinian liberation and the No Arena fight against a proposed sports complex in the historic Chinatown neighborhood.
The visceral imagery and compelling narratives presented on the gallery walls emphasize a crucial point, a collective and sustained response is necessary to ensure meaningful and lasting progress is achieved. This philosophical approach—that change requires unity and shared purpose—serves as the foundational connective tissue binding both the publication and the exhibition. Spanning several decades of resistance and activism, the collection functions as a series of time capsules. These suspended moments deliberately position the artist not as detached photojournalists, but as participant-observers—marching alongside a broad and diverse coalition of revolutionaries united by the inalienable right of all people to be truly free.
This show closes 6/27/26.
