In 1959, Leni Sinclair, then 19, fled her native East Germany for the United States, settling in Detroit to study at Wayne State University where she became interested in politics. She joined Students for a Democratic Society very early on, becoming one of two members citywide participating in the New Left movement that would soon take the nation by storm.
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In 1964, she met poet and jazz critic John Sinclair, who would become her husband and collaborator in the creation of the Detroit Artists Workshop – a network of communal houses, print shop, and performance space, where Leni photographed jazz legends like John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Thelonious Monk, as well as proto-punk band MC5.
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“We were living outside the system, starting to create something for ourselves, and not the predominant culture, which was too stiff,” Sinclair says with a laugh. “We wanted to have a place without restrictions. That to me was more radical than anything I had experienced in my life.”
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