Film Screening & Discussion: The Picture Taker 

Saturday, Oct 12 | 2 pm | Museum Admission

With Ernest Withers, iconic African American civil rights photographer—and paid FBI informant—there was a lot more than meets the eye. From his Memphis studio, Withers’ nearly 2 million images were a treasured record of Black history but his legacy was complicated by decades of secret FBI service revealed only after his death. Was he a friend of the civil rights community, or enemy—or both? Join the Reginald F. Lewis Museum for a film screening of this intriguing documentary. A post film discussion with filmmaker Lise Yasui and Rosalind Withers, Founder of the Withers Collection Museum & Gallery  will follow with a Q&A moderated by RFLM President Terri Lee Freeman.

Rosalind Withers is the daughter of Civil Rights Movement photographer Ernest C. Withers. She founded the Withers Collection Museum & Gallery which opened to the public in February 2011 with a mission to educate from this pictorial legacy of over 1.8 million images and to preserve the works of her father Dr. Ernest C. Withers, Sr. 

Dr. Withers left behind one of the largest and most significant collection of photography ever amassed by an individual. With focus on the museum’s mission Rosalind curated the 7,000 square feet space, located on the world-famous Beale Street to give 30,000 plus worldwide visitors a stunning photographic experience in American and Civil Rights history.

Lise Yasui is the film producer for The Picture Taker.  She produced and directed the Oscar-nominated Family Gathering, about her Japanese American family’s WWII internment experience. It aired on American Experience, the BBC, and Star TV. She co-produced Frontline’s Peabody-winning The Gate of Heavenly Peace, about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, which was broadcast internationally.

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