Flashpoint! Protest in Print.

Very excited to share that my very first photobook, OWS, is included in a major work on protest in print, Flashpoint!, put out by 10 x 10 photobooks. Read the full excerpt here:

Robert Dunn’s 2012 zine OWS, an abbreviation for Occupy Wall Street, elegantly captures a perspective on the movement that eschews images of overt outrage or mass demonstrations, offering a more delicate, thoughtful and artistic approach. Take in Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan through the fall of 2011, Dunn’s photographs chronicle the spaces, ephemera and people at the epicenter of a movement that challenged the status quo. From 17 September to 15 November 2011, Occupy Wall Street consisted of thousands of activists who overran the park to express outrage over economic inequality and the corrosive influences of money in politics.

​Dunn has been prolific in creating zines and photobooks, publishing some fourty-nine since his first with OWS in 2012. Candidly and artfully addressing subjects from human emotion to the sites and scenes of New York City, Dunn uses photography as an exploration of color and form, even when covering such historically significant events as Occupy Wall Street. In the zine, he approaches his subjects with both levity and reverence. From scenes showing activists’ makeshift homes to an evocative shot of a sign in the zine’s last image that reads, “TRUE FREE DOM!” resting upside-down as if it were a reversed American flag, to a shouting man with cupped hands silhouetted by a red balloon, Dunn’s OWS captures a tangible sense of the excitement, defiance and camaraderie felt for two months in Zuccotti Park, while showing respect for the gravitas of the movement and its ever-relevant ideologies.

If you’d like to learn more about Flashpoint! and the work featured, visit the book page here. Available to purchase, with international shipping available. If you’re browsing in-person, Printed Matter still has a few copies here.