Charles Moore

CHARLES MOORE

Charles Moore was a nationally-known photographer who lived in the Mother Lode region in the 1980s. Working as a newspaper photographer in Alabama in the late ’50s and early ’60s, Charles produced many of the iconic images of the civil rights movement, notably one documenting Martin Luther King’s arrest for loitering on September 3, 1958. That image has been described as an image “as iconic to our times as the Mona Lisa is to the Renaissance.”

Charles’ critically-acclaimed civil rights photography is said to have led to the passage of the landmark civil rights legislation enacted in 1965. His civil rights work is chronicled in the book, “Powerful Days: Civil Rights Photography of Charles Moore.”

His work has been featured in publications ranging from Life Magazine to Playboy. Charles was proud to have been the first recipient, in 1989, of the annual Kodak Crystal Eagle Award for Photojournalism.

During his time in the Mother Lode, Charles’ photographs of the region were featured in a book titled ‘The Mother Lode: A Celebration of California’s Gold Country.”

Gracious to a fault, he was always willing to share his knowledge of photography with his friends. Charles was a valued supporter of an earlier version of Tuolumne County Arts. He was an important contributor to InFocus and served as a judge several times.
​
The Charles Moore Award is presented each year to commemorate what Steven Kasher has described as the “photographic agility, graphic ingenuity and sheer passion” embodied in Charles’ work; work in which the key element is capturing the moment.