‘Are Your Lungs Worth More?’ An Artist Captures the Protests in New York

On May 30, Kevin Claiborne, a 31-year-old artist enrolled in Columbia University’s visual arts MFA program, was on a Manhattan sidewalk photographing his fellow marchers when a police officer approached him with a baton. “He swung at my face, knees, and camera, even though I’d put my hands up,” Claiborne says. “And then ran away back into the crowd of police.” After he was beaten, Claiborne says, he was maced. (The New York Police Department did not supply comment when asked about this incident.) The experience, he notes, “was a prime example for why these things need to be documented and shared.”

Claiborne was born on Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland—both of his parents were in the service—and his background is in math and education. He entered Columbia with a concentration in photography, “but I consider myself a conceptual artist,” he says.