The Vanguard: A Photographic Essay on the Black Panthers

Boston: Beacon Press, 1970. Photos of the Black Panther Party and their audience, taken in late 1968, after Baruch spoke to Kathleen Cleaver at an event; Eldridge Cleaver, notes Baruch in her introduction, asked, "Why do your photographs have feeling, and none of the work I've seen of us by other photographers has?" Baruch and her husband & collaborator Jones studied under Andel Adams, Minor White, Dorothea Lange & Edward Weston at the California School of Fine arts begining in 1946, and were established documentarians by the late 1960s. Baruch credits prejudice she experienced against her as a Jew for her sympathy with other unjustly treated people, and her impulse to give the Panthers, then approaching the peak of their power, a fair showing to the public. Her and Jones's pictures were first exhibited in San Francisco (after some controversy), then in Harlem and at Dartmouth College before this book was published. The book includes numerous b/w photos, Baruch's preface, a critical/concerned essay by Black journalist William Worthy on the Panthers' political state, a Panther chronology, and the Party's own rules and party platform. Hardcover in jacket as pictured; the first edition (first printing) listing no later printings. Light wear to book; jacket with tears near head of spine & upper rear panel, some nicks & other short tears, minor chips, minor crease. Text clean; [128] pages, about 104 b/w photos. . First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good/Very Good. Quarto.