This site is a work in progress that will grow to include more images of Albany’s Civil Rights Movement and many other topics that track a tumultuous period of civil reform.
Paley’s daughter Mary has digitized hundreds of her father’s images as well as microforms of The Knickerbocker News pages where the photos first appeared. Equipped with examples of her father‘s insight, she hopes to bring life to the regional and national context of an era’s complex ethical dramas.
Mission Statement
Based at bobpaley.com, OmiKronicles is a hypermedia production company incorporating documentary photography, oral history, archived news articles, and commentary from print journalists to reconstruct historically significant moments in 20th century America. The production company's specific focus does and will document the sweeping changes of the 1960's era in the New York region and the Capital Region of New York Sate. Our work-in-progress, Close to This Moment, provides educators, researchers, and the general public with an authentic understanding of the political and social dramas of a turbulent epoch often characterized as an awakening of consciousness
Production Goals
- Celebrate the working life of veteran news photographer, Bob Paley, whose artistic images appeared in the Knickerbocker News (Albany, N.Y.) from 1947 to 1974. After his death in 1974, Paley's images were displayed at a retrospective exhibit at the Albany Institute of History and Art
- Employ Bob Paley’s photographs/historical documents, and other multi-media sources, to mount a rich set of retrospectives that foreground important individuals, topics, and themes of an era
- Utilize digitized documents, audio commentary from eye witnesses and participants linked to these subjects in sound treatments and video to amplify the creative conflicts of this era
- Stream audio files/oral histories from these individuals and/or individuals linked to these subjects
- Frame significant local and regional events within a national context
- Generate a text index of transcribed news articles from print dailies of that era
- Collect and publish memoir/commentary from contemporary print journalists
- Use video, photo, and audio materials for cultural presentations linked to specific historical topics of the era.
- Publish memoir/commentary from contemporary print journalists
- Produce and publish teacher resources aligned with the New York State learning Standards in English Language Arts, social studies, and art
- Pay tribute to the grass-roots leaders of Albany's civil rights movement
- Document the achievements of forgotten Italian Americans from Albany, New York's "Little Italy" - a lively and cohesive neighborhood that disappeared during construction of the Empire State Plaza
- Use diverse media to recapture the experience of migrant workers (1967) who labored in Columbia County to bring in the Hudson Valley apple harvest
- Document the heritage of neglect experienced by patients at Letchworth Village in Theills County (1972)
Disclaimer
Bob Paley’s photos are most often used to illustrate compelling events in regional history. Unless an image is captioned or linked to a national figure, no attempt has been made to create a literal pairing of text and image.