Leni Sinclair is something of a legend in Detroit. Her portraits of iconic musicians like Prince, Iggy Pop, Fela Kuti, Patti Smith, and the Grateful Dead have given her a reputation as a veteran rock photographer, but her archives reveal a lifetime dedication to political activism.

Raised in East Germany during the Cold War, Sinclair relocated to the United States in the late 1950s. While studying at Wayne State University, she helped cofound the avant-garde art cooperative Red Door Gallery, which became the Detroit Artists Workshop. In 1968, she cofounded the White Panther Party (WPP, later renamed the Rainbow People’s Party — more on that below) with her husband, John Sinclair, who managed Detroit’s iconic leftist proto-punk band MC5. The WPP disseminated Black Panther Party literature, organized independent community services, and combated racism and white supremacy. Their ten-point program — adapted from the Black Panthers — called for the free exchange of energy and materials, the end of money and the prison system, and the dissolving of all unnatural boundaries.

At eighty-one, Sinclair is still a sharp-tongued critic of police violence and capitalist exploitation in the United States. Earlier this year, an exhibition and monograph from the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD), Motor City Underground, brought together the largest-ever compilation of her photographs from protests, rallies, and concerts throughout the ’60s and ’70s.