An exhibition imagines Emmett Till’s life if it hadn’t been brutally cut short

“If Emmett Till Lived: Freedom on American Ground” at the Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP) in Chicago reframes the story of Emmett Till by imagining the life he might have lived after his 1955 lynching in Money, Mississippi. Chief curator Karen Irvine says the exhibition shifts attention from the violence that ended Till’s life to the possibilities taken from him, emphasizing photography’s role in remembrance and collective responsibility. Curated by Harvard cultural historian Sarah Elizabeth Lewis as part of MoCP’s 50th-anniversary programming, the show draws from the museum’s 18,000-piece collection and includes work by more than 110 artists such as Dawoud Bey, Christian Boltanski, Todd Hido, Sally Mann, and Carrie Mae Weems. The exhibition also foregrounds Mamie Till Mobley’s insistence on an open-casket funeral in Chicago, which helped galvanize the Civil Rights movement through widely circulated photographs.

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