Chris Campion Editor & Author

Bud Lee (1941-2015) is a self-taught photographer, who first took up a camera professionally in the military and received fine art training at the National Academy in New York. He had an idiosyncratic eye unconstrained by the conventions of documentary photography. Between 1967 and 1974, he worked on assignment for Life, Esquire, Rolling Stone, and many other publications, somehow finding himself at the centre of some of the biggest stories of the time. An outsider who got insider access, his work is poetic and painterly, occasionally droll and irreverent. The War Is Here is the first book to collect his photographs. The Honorable Ras J. Baraka is the 40th Mayor of the City of Newark. Born and raised in Newark, with family who've lived in the city for more than 80 years, Mayor Baraka's progressive approach to governing has won him accolades from grassroots organizations to the White House. His father, the late Amiri Baraka, a legendary poet, playwright and political activist, was intimately connected with the events that occurred in Newark in 1967. Chris Campion is a British author, journalist, and editor, and has written for publications that include The Guardian, The Times (UK), Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, NME, Dazed & Confused, and Vice. He is an archivist for the Estate of Bud Lee, the editor of The War Is Here, and contributes an essay on Bud Lee and the story behind photographs, entitled "On Avon, Between Badger and Livingston".