The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

The powerful Baltimore photo on Time’s cover was shot by an amateur photographer

Time magazine's cover this week is a powerful photograph of a man running from police during the riots that enveloped Charm City this week. The photo was shot by 26-year-old amateur photographer Devin Allen with "American 1968 2015" written across the front.

"For me, who's from Baltimore city, to be on the cover of Time magazine, I don't even know what to say" Allen said. "I'm speechless."

Allen's uploaded more than 90 photos to his Instagram account that have accumulated thousands of likes since protests in Baltimore began. The photo that made the Time cover on the roots of the Baltimore riot was his most widely shared, Time said.

The piece to which the cover refers was written by the incomparable David Von Drehle, a former reporter at the Post.  In it, Von Drehle writes:

For nine uncomfortable months we have wrestled in new ways with our centuries-old conversation about race. The roots of these days of rage, whether in Ferguson or North Charleston or Baltimore, reach down through decades of compounded failures. Each flash point is different; so was each community’s response. But there is something universal about them all. As Obama noted, during remarks in the Rose Garden that ranged from determined to despairing, “I think we, as a country, have to do some soul-searching. This is not new. It’s been going on for decades."
Loading...