Paul Fusco, USA. Harmans, MD. 1968. Robert KENNEDY funeral train.

Paul Fusco’s photographs made from the RFK funeral train are a remarkable portrait of America in 1968, one of the most tempestuous years in modern American history. There were assassinations, riots, and the war in Vietnam. For a few hours in June, people stood silently, reverently, to pay their respects as the cortege train rolled by.

I watched on TV. I was 14 years old in 1968, and my hopes for the future felt crushed. Fifty years later, we are in another moment of national crisis no less serious, though without the violence of ’68. The comparative normality of the present makes it all the more insidious as Trump and the Republican party chip away the foundation of our shared values piece by piece. It is a slow motion death — and we stand transfixed as the cortege train of democracy rolls by.

A Dutch artist, Rein Jelle Terpstra, revisited Paul Fusco’s photographs by tracking down some of the people who witnessed the RFK train in 1968. He recorded their recollections and collected their snapshots and super 8 movies. It’s a great idea, but the execution is thin, a multi-screen repetition of a handful of faded still images and flickering film of the train in motion. The original Fusco images remain powerful and iconic.

We need more from artists, curators, and publishers — now.

“No reason to get excited,” the thief, he kindly spoke
“There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late”

— Bob Dylan