The documentary The Loving Story premieres February 14th on HBO.

burnedshoes:

© Grey Villet, April 1965, The Lovings, King and Queen County, Virginia

Richard and Mildred Loving with their children Peggy, Donald, and Sidney in their living room.

The Loving Story, opening at New York’s ICP this week (Jan. 20 – May 6, 2012) is a revelation, an undiscovered gem. In 1958, when Richard and Mildred Loving got married, it was an astonishing act of bravery and defiance: an interracial couple in the era of the Ku Klux Klan and Bull Connor - of firehoses and police dogs and lynchings; the Birmingham bombings and Freedom Rides were still to come. And yet here, in the midst of all the mayhem and hate, are a white man and a black woman casually interwined, so comfortable in their own skin that they are oblivious to onlookers; their armor is their love.

The compelling thing about the Lovings is that they are exquisitely ordinary. Only a photographer who can make himself invisible could capture that. There was never anything fancy about Grey’s pictures; they stripped people to their essence.

(read more here and here; thanks to chagalov for the la lettre link!)