Honoring Martin Luther King Jr. Day with ‘Everyday People’ and @bydvnlln
Follow @bydvnlln on Instagram to see more of his photography, and check out #MLKDay to see how the Instagram community is remembering Dr. King today.
“In the 1960s, you only could follow mainstream news and media outlets like newspapers and television. Now, we can control the story and tell it ourselves,” 27-year-old photographer Devin Allen (@bydvnlln) says. Devin’s photos documenting protests in his hometown of Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray while under police custody propelled him into the spotlight.
“The difference from then and now is that we don’t have a Malcolm X or Martin Luther King Jr. to lead us, but the people are fighting back daily. I watched normal, everyday people become activists. When you look at media and all you see is negativity, it feels like we are losing sometimes. But when I’m out documenting, I see so many beautiful things born because of the uprising, and I try to show that in my work.
“I try to document everything — the good, the bad and the ugly. I try to show the beauty in the struggle. Being an activist — and sometimes considered a journalist — can be tough. But I’m here for change and to document my people’s history, so the story is told right.”
