Exhibit Featuring Acclaimed Photographer Bud Lee Now at MSMA

Bud Lee Picture Maker: Photographs from 1967 to 1972 is now on view at Piedmont University’s Mason-Scharfenstein Museum of Art (MSMA). The exhibit will conclude with a reception from 4-6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 24. The public is invited to attend this free event. 

Lee (1941-2015) was an award-winning, Florida-based photojournalist and artist. Lee studied fine art at the National Academy in New York and began his career as a photographer for Stars & Stripes while serving in the U.S. Army during the war in Vietnam.

Lee’s photojournalistic coverage includes the Newark uprising of 1967 and the Cockettes, a San Francisco-based performance group active from 1969 to 1972.

The MSMA exhibition corresponds to the publication of Lee’s monograph, The War is Here: Newark 1967 (Ze Books, May 2023). The book features a foreword by the Hon. Ras Baraka, 40th mayor of Newark, and an essay by Chris Campion, a writer for the U.K.’s The Guardian and author of Walking on the Moon. Lee’s story and his work have been revisited in The Guardian and The New Yorker in the wake of the book’s publication.

The exhibition at the MSMA features work from the years he worked for national publications such as Esquire, Rolling Stone, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Vogue, and Mother Jones. Portraits of luminaries of the era include civil rights leader Martin Luther, King Jr., pop artist Andy Warhol, musician Cass Elliot, and director François Truffaut.

Lee was named U.S. military photographer of the Year in 1966 and received Life’s National Photo Story of the Year award in 1967. He founded the Iowa Photographers' Workshop and began the Artist Filmmaker in the Schools program in Tampa, Florida.

Learn more about Piedmont University’s fine arts events and programs at piedmont.edu/fa.