When Lawrence Bryant became a professional photographer, he only wanted to shoot concerts. Four years later, his lens is instead trained on one of the most devastating perhaps transformative—stories of the past decade: the events following the death of Michael Brown, the unarmed teen killed by a White officer in Ferguson, MO.
A native of Florrisant, which neighbors Ferguson in St. Louis County, Bryant says shooting the events in his community has been difficult but important work. "It's scary to see, it's like something from a movie."
"As a Black photographer, it is my job to capture this part of history, this timeframe," says the 38-year-old, whose work most frequently appears in the St. Louis American, the African-American weekly newspaper that has been in print since 1928.
