Sumi composed and performed original music added to Erin O’Hara’s original film score in the award winning documentary, The Picture Taker (directed by Phil Bertelsen and produced by Lise Yasui). It’s about the life and work of photographer Ernest Withers, whose path intersected key flash points in 20th century history.
Withers developed over a million images that came to define America’s civil rights struggle. He photographed the Emmett Till murder trial, the desegregation of Little Rock High, the Montgomery bus and Memphis sanitation workers strikes and was behind the scenes with Martin Luther King, Jr.
Despite his commitment to truth-telling through photojournalism, Withers took a closely-guarded secret to his grave: for over a decade of his professional career, he worked for the FBI.