Bev Grant (b. 1942, Portland, US)

Bev Grant is an activist, photographer, documentary filmmaker, and musician.

Raised in Portland, Oregon, Grant moved to New York City in the early 1960s for her husband’s jazz music career. She worked as a secretary to help support her husband, before eventually becoming the partner of another jazz musician. A victim of domestic abuse (both physical and psychological), Grant left him after two years in 1966, shortly after he threw away the book she was reading, Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. Inspired by the burgeoning movements of second-wave feminism and anti-war demonstrations , she began becoming more politically active. In 1967 she attended a conference held by Students for a Democratic Society at Princeton University, where she particpated in a women's liberation workshop led by Pam (Chude) Allen, who invited her to join a consciousness-raising group on the Lower East Side.

Having settled on the Lower East Side, Grant immediately began to participate in more protests. Using a 35mm camera, she captured New York City, and America writ large, at a time of immense social upheaval. She was a member of the political documentary collective called New York Newsreel (later renamed Third World Newsreel), and also contributed photos to Liberation News Service, an underground press that distributed photographs and written reporting to numerous political newspapers across the country.

Grant lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

bevgrantphotography.com