Edward Salem // Work / Statement / CV / Contact
Silver Medalist (Portrait as Peter Norman at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City), 2010
On the 200m medal podium at the 1968 Summer Olympics, during the playing of "The Star-Spangled Banner", African Americans Tommie Smith and John Carlos famously joined in a black power salute. Peter Norman, a white Australian, was the silver medalist at the podium as Carlos and Smith made their famous gesture. Norman sympathized with the black power movement, but he appreciated that he did not have the right to signify his solidarity with a raised fist. His use of the black power salute would have been a misappropriation. His salute would have deprived the gesture of its basis in the shared experience of oppression; the symbol would have been weakened by his use of it. As a Palestinian American in Palestine, this portrait implicates my Americanness.
