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One hot summer afternoon in 1963, Leonard Freed was wandering around Harlem when he captured this photograph of two young residents, in sheer delight, cooling off from the heat with an open fire hydrant, which had become a lifeline during heatwaves in the city. At the time, Freed was in the early stages of what would become the landmark photo project, Black in White America. Traveling to New York, Washington, D.C. and all across the south, the photographer captured segregation and racial inequality in the country during the mid-1960s, and the project was published as a photobook in 1968.
