Showing posts with label History's Big Picture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label History's Big Picture. Show all posts

Monday, September 19, 2011

THOUGHTS ON AN EXHIBITION


 HISTORY'S BIG PICTURE



This is the final week for the exhibition "History's Big Picture". We always find ourselves discussing our impressions and thoughts and the feedback we received from gallery visitors and collectors as each exhibit concludes. This time, it is different.
We have each been involved in the art world for 30 years. We couldn't begin to count the number of exhibits we have visited - or hosted as galleriests - over that period.

"History's Big Picture" coincided with the start of the 10 year anniversary of our move to Santa Fe, and after more than 55 exhibits here we wanted to present a very special exhibit, one that somehow emphasized the necessity of understanding and appreciating photojournalism.

There have been many exhibits that we wished could have run longer. This will be the first that will be actually difficult to take down. Since the opening on July 2, the exhibit has been seen by many thousands of viewers, timed as it was to coincide with the busy Santa Fe summer season. Visitors from all over the world have experienced a walk through the past 80 years in history: young, old, tours, school groups, veterans, politicians, museum curators, collectors, the "famous", and even a few homeless. We have seen parents quietly explaining the situation behind a photograph to their children, we have seen people softly weeping, and the quiet of the gallery has occasionally been startled by someone gasping "Oh my God!".
The exhibit progresses chronologically, starting in 1930's Germany with photographs of Dr. Joseph Goebbels, and the first meeting of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini that have caused several visitors to whirl about and face the front desk and exclaim "This is serious!"

The photographs from Depression-era America have instantly resonated with gallery guests as they compare that time with the current economic condition. Interestingly, the same comparison has just recently been addressed in articles in the Los Angeles Times and The Guardian.
And from there the exhibition continues, a roller coaster through World War II, the 1950's; the brief hope of John Kennedy and the violent and shocking end of that hope; through the civil rights struggle and another shocking assassination, the shining hope of Robert Kennedy, the devastation of his assassination; the horror of Vietnam, the shock of 9/11, and the complicated consequences of America's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The final photograph is by Eric Smith of the casket of an Iraq War soldier on an empty stage prior to his memorial service delivers visitors near the exit and the front desk, and often a conversation ensues. Some need to talk, some need comfort, some have been angry, and some have been inspired to find out more.
This exhibition has affirmed our steadfast belief in the power of a photograph. The exhibit's press release stated "Photographers in this exhibition illustrate the power of photography to inform, persuade, enlighten and enrich the viewer's life." And on the About Us page of our website we state " The way a photograph can capture time, emotions, and feelings makes photography a unique art form". We have witnessed this first hand and in a very powerful confirmation during this exhibit.

We are so grateful for all of the participating photographers, so many of whom we have been privileged to have known know personally. For those who are no longer living with us, we thank their families. For those still working, we honor your commitment and service to humanity.

We are so very thankful to all who have visited the exhibit. There are discussions about the possibility of travelling the exhibit to some museums, so if you missed it stay tuned. It will continue to live on our website in the Archived Showcase section as well.

Thank you.






Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Photographers revisit 9/11; 'It was that horrific'



Firefighters at Ground Zero, Sept. 11, 2001<br>© Bergen Record
Firefighters at Ground Zero, Sept. 11, 2001
© Bergen Record
Via msnbc Photo Blog

In his new documentary "Witness to History," photojournalist Thomas Franklin revisits 9/11 through the eyes - and lenses - of photojournalists who captured iconic photos that day.


When Tom Franklin, photojournalist for The Record newspaper in New Jersey, took the picture showing three firemen raising the American flag above the rubble of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, he had no idea it would become an iconic image.

“It was something that just happened,” he said. “I shot it the best way I could and I moved on.”

Franklin said he was standing about 30 yards away from the three firefighters, and the photo was one of a series of frames he shot of them that fateful afternoon.

On the 10-year anniversary of 9/11, Franklin - now a multimedia editor for NorthJersey.com - revisits the day of the attacks in a new documentary about the iconic photos of the day and the photojournalists who captured them. Franklin says photographers played an important role in documenting the historic day.

“I hope a lot of people get to see [the documentary],” he told msnbc.com. “It’s a way of recognizing what journalists do.”

Featuring dramatic images of 9/11, the 13-minute documentary “Witness to History” looks behind the lenses of professional photographers such as David Handschuh of the New York Daily News and Aris Economopoulos of the New Jersey Star-Ledger, and accidental witnesses such as Carmen Taylor, who happened to be visiting New York from Arkansas that day.

Taylor, who was on vacation by herself, told Franklin she would have been screaming if she hadn’t been busy taking photos.

While iconic, most of the images from that day are stirring, if not shocking. Franklin argues there is real value in retelling what happened, particularly because of the horror of the events.

“9/11 was that bad,” he said. “It was that horrific.”

Watch the entire documentary here, and watch Thomas Franklin explain how he got the iconic image of the firemen raising the American flag.


Thomas Franklin's photograph of Firefighters at Ground Zero, Sept. 11, 2001 is included in the exhibition "History's Big Picture" at Monroe Gallery of Photography through September 25, 2011.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

2011 Lucie Awards: Bill Eppridge is Honoree for Achivement in Photojournalism

9th Annual Lucie Awards


The Lucie Awards is the annual gala ceremony honoring the greatest achievements in photography. The photography community from countries around the globe will pay tribute to the most outstanding photography achievements presented at the Gala Awards ceremony. Each year, the Advisory Board nominates deserving individuals across a variety of categories who will be honored during the Lucie Awards ceremony. Once the nominations have been received, the votes are tallied and an honoree in each category is identified.

The 2011 Honoree for Achievement in Photojournalism is Bill Eppridge.

Bill Eppridge already owned a Kodak Brownie Star Flash 620 camera when one day an itinerant photographer with a pony stopped by his house in Richmond, Virginia and asked to photograph Bill and his younger sister. Eppridge was only eight but it was then that he decided he wanted to be a photographer - he could have a big camera, travel, meet lots of interesting people, and have his own pony. That was just the hint of a lifelong career in photojournalism covering some of the most important people and events in history.

Born in Buenos Aires in 1938, Eppridge spent his early childhood in Virginia, and Tennessee. The family moved to Delaware when he was 14. A self-taught photographer, he began shooting for his school newspaper and yearbook, and then sports for the Wilmington Star newspaper. Eppridge was only fifteen, but this early exposure to a real newsroom gave him a taste for journalism.

Eppridge grew up during World War II looking at Life magazine. He was entranced by the work of their war photographers, and later influenced by Gordon Parks and Leonard McCombe. Their pictures looked effortless, as if they just happened in front of the camera and the photographers grabbed them. It was that style of photography that fascinated him –an entire story was told with one significant image.

In 1960 Eppridge graduated from the University of Missouri, Journalism program headed by Clif Edom who had begun the famous Missouri Photojournalism Workshop with Roy Stryker of the Farm Security Administration. While still a student, Eppridge was accepted into that workshop twice during his college years. He got a career boost when his photograph of a white horse against a tornadic sky won first prize for pictorial in the NPPA Pictures of the Year competition in 1959. He was twice named NPPA College Photographer of the Year and awarded internships at Life magazine.


Eppridge’s first professional assignment after graduation was a nine-month documentary trip around the world for National Geographic magazine. After that, he began shooting for Life. During the year 1964 while on a contract basis with the magazine, Eppridge was there when the Beatles first stepped off the plane in the United States, and chronicled their effect on this country. He spent several days photographing a young Barbra Streisand on the verge of stardom, covered Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan who was to sing at his first Newport Folk Festival, and immediately afterward he was sent to Mississippi where the bodies of slain civil rights workers Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner had been found buried in an earthen dam. Eppridge stayed for several days and photographed the solemn funeral of James Chaney. He soon earned a place on the masthead of Life.

As a Life staff photographer for most of the 1960s, until that magazine folded in 1972, Eppridge worked alongside many of the legends he had admired while growing up – Alfred Eisenstadt, Gordon Parks, Carl Mydans, Ralph Morse, and Larry Burrows.

Eppridge’s unique style of photojournalism brought him history-making assignments - he covered Latin American revolutions, the Vietnam war, and Woodstock. Eppridge was the only photographer admitted into Marilyn Lovell’s home as her husband, Jim, orbited the moon in the crippled Apollo 13 spacecraft. His landmark photographic essay on drug use, “Needle Park- Heroin Addiction” won the National Headliner’s Award. He was given unprecedented access to the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution in Leningrad and photographed the entire Baltic fleet as it was assembled in the Neva River, something that no westerner had ever seen.

One of Eppridge’s most memorable and poignant essays was his coverage of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, first in 1966, and then again on the road with RFK during the 1968 presidential campaign. His photograph of the wounded Senator on the floor of the Ambassador Hotel kitchen seconds after he was shot has been described as a modern Pieta.

After Life ceased publication in 1972, Eppridge joined Sports Illustrated where he continued to use his photojournalist talent to cover both Winter and Summer Olympics; America’s Cup sailing; the environmental disasters of the Mount St. Helen’s volcanic eruption, and the devastating Exxon Valdez oil spill and aftermath. His sporting essays and wildlife photography took him around the world to the Arctic, Africa, Asia, and the Alps.

Eppridge has received some of the highest honors his profession bestows – the NPPA Joseph A. Sprague Award, and The Missouri School of Journalism Medal of Honor. He has been a respected force in training a new generation of photojournalists for more than twenty years at both the Missouri Photojournalism Workshop, and the Eddie Adams Photography Workshop. His photographs have been exhibited at the Smithsonian Museum of American History; The High Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Visa Pour L’Image, and in galleries and museums around the world.

Eppridge currently lives in Western Connecticut with his wife Adrienne and his cat "Bear". After nearly six decades as a photojournalist he is, even now, never without his camera, and is currently photographing several projects including an essay about the new American farmers - but he still doesn’t own a pony.

Several of Bill Eppridge's historic photographs are featured in the exhibition "History's Big Picture" through September 25. A major solo exhibition celebrating Eppridge's Lucie Award will feature many of his most significan photo essays, and will open at Monroe Gallery of Photography September 30 and continue through November 20, 2011.

Sunday, August 7, 2011

EXCERPTS FROM AN EVENING OF PHOTOJOURNALISM



We were honored to welcome two  preeminent names in American journalism, former Time, Life, and People magazine editors Richard Stolley and Hal Wingo for an evening of conversation in the gallery in conjuction with the exhibition "History's Big Picture". The gallery was filled to standing room only as they talked about the power of magazine photography and photojournalism's past, present, and future.

A few excerpts from the evening:

Dick Stolley recounted the events surrounding President John F. Kennedy's assassination, and how he arrived in Dallas on the evening of the assassination and met early the next morning with Abraham Zapruder and secured the original and first-generation print of the "Zapruder film" for LIFE magazine. Stolley continued that he went to the County jail for the transfer of Lee Harvey Oswald, only to learn from a TV camerman that Jack Ruby had shot Oswald as he was leaving the City jail. Stolley then singled out Bob Jackson's Pulitzer-Prize winning photograph in the exhibition and continued:

"Two pictures were taken - a guy named Jack Beers shot a split-second earlier than Bob Jackson and the difference between the two photographs is profound. This captures everything and that split second before just missed. That split second is what makes the difference in so many of the photographs on these walls."




Both Stolley and Wingo covered stories in South during the most violent years of the Civil Rights struggle. Wingo told how he found assignments in the South scared him far more than any in Vietnam. They talked about the power oF the image, and the influence civil rights photographs had on American public opinion at the time.

Dick Stolley: "When LIFE showed up there were already a lot of writers covering the civil rights stories. It was one thing to write about segregationist crowds trying to prevent nine teenagers from going into Central High School, but when you showed these photographs of angry, contorted faces it made all the difference in two ways: one, in us understanding of what was going on in Little Rock and throughout the South, and two, the attitude the people in the photographs had.

It was one thing to be written about, it was a very different thing to wind up in the pages of LIFE magazine with your face contorted in rage...and they caught on to that instantly.

America saw these photograph and thought "Good God, what is happening?"

Hal Wingo continued: "I wonder if anyone here tonight might recognize this picture? Does it ring a bell in any of you?"

He held up this photograph, a double page spread from an old LIFE magazine:




These are the 18 men arrested, including County Deputy Cecil Price and his boss, Sheriff Lawrence Rainey, for the murders of three civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. These 18 men were arraigned not on on State charges, because Mississippi did not charge them, but on Federal charges of violating the rights of the three civil rights workers. This is the picture taken just after their arraignment...do they look worried?

They thought their ace in the hole was they would be judged locally, by a jury of their peers, and that's the safest thing that could happen"

On the state of photojournalism:

Photojournalism today maybe has a broader definition than just the creative work of talented photojournalists who can arrange or capture a moment that will be a lasting impression from these situations. It seems to me today photojournalism is any photograph that is in the sense journalism, that tells the story."  Dick Stolley

We would like to graciously thank Dick and Hal for a wonderful evening of discussion.


Friday, August 5, 2011

Exhibit to showcase photojournalists' historic works; Discussion about the past, present and future of photojournalism

 Mary Vecchio grieving over stain student, Kent State, May 4, 1970

Robert Nott | The Santa Fe New Mexican
Friday, August 05, 2011

Photojournalists are the invisible documentarians of history; men and women who understand that their images will outlive them. We may all remember the classic black-and-white photo of a sailor kissing a woman in Times Square on VJ Day, 1945, but do we recall who shot it? (Alfred Eisenstaedt). Likewise, the image of Jack Ruby shooting presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald may remain indelibly imprinted in our minds, but do we know the name of the photographer? (Robert Jackson).

Monroe Gallery of Photography pays homage to the historical contributions made by photojournalists with both a photo exhibition called History's Big Picture and a public discussion with magazine editors Richard Stolley and Hal Wingo.

Both men worked as editors for Time, Life and People magazines, and the two will talk about the past, present and future of photojournalism at 5 p.m. Friday at Monroe Gallery on Don Gaspar Street.

"These are real moments captured by real people," Wingo said during a joint interview with Stolley at the gallery. "These were all done before the advent of Photoshop [computer software that allows manipulation of images]. These days you can't necessarily trust a picture."

Following up on that point, Stolley pointed to John Filo's photo of Mary Vecchio grieving over a slain student in the wake of the Kent State shootings in 1970 — an image hanging in the Monroe Gallery exhibition — and noted that a fence post seems to be protruding from Vecchio's head.

"Photoshop could erase that and probably make that a better picture, aesthetically, but it's not the truth," he said.

A lot of the images in the Monroe show suggest that photojournalism displays its power via tragic, sometimes bloody images — Eddie Adams's photo of South Vietnamese National Police Chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan shooting a suspected Viet Cong in the head at close range, for instance, or Bill Eppridge's image of an Ambassador Hotel busboy attempting to help slain presidential candidate Robert Kennedy.

But, as Stolley points out, "There are moments of love that are caught as well," as with Ed Clark's moving photo of an accordion player weeping as President Franklin D. Roosevelt's funeral train passes by in Warm Springs, Ga.

Though these photojournalists were well trained and prepared to capture unexpected moments, luck and timing sometimes played a hand. Stolley tells the story of two photographers who were in the same place at the same time on the morning of Nov. 23, 1963.

That's when Dallas police were transferring President John F. Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, through the police headquarters basement on his way to jail. Nightclub owner Jack Ruby stepped out from the crowd and shot Ruby at close range just as photographer Robert Jackson took a photo. Jackson won a Pulitzer Prize for his efforts, but photographer Jack Beers caught nearly the same image on his camera — about half a second earlier.

"Two pictures were taken by two photographers that morning," Stolley said. "The first one (Beers) is just off; taken less than a second before the other. Jackson's is the photo that became famous."

Stolley and Wingo remember a number of photojournalists who gave their lives on the job: Robert Capa, who stepped on a land mine while covering the First Indochina War; Paul Schutzer, who was killed covering the Six-Day War in the Middle East, and Life photographer Larry Burrows, who died in a helicopter crash in Laos in 1971.

"He used up two 'nine lives' before he died," Wingo said of his colleague Burrows.

Both men feel that photojournalism remains a vibrant art form. "Young people would rather look at a picture than read," Stolley said, pointing to the success of life.com, which offers more than 10 million photos on its site.

And photojournalism does not have to rely on the written word to tell its story.

"You didn't have to say or write anything," Wingo said. "The photo says everything you want to know. The fact that it captures a moment that is frozen in time stays with you."

If you go:

What: Time, Life and People editors Richard Stolley and Hal Wingo discuss History's Big Picture

When: 5-7 p.m. Friday

Where: Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar Ave., 992-0800.

Admission: Free

Seating is first-come, first-served. The photo exhibit runs through September 25.

Related: 'This is one of the most powerful photographic shows I have ever seen and, certainly, in my opinion, the best Santa Fe has ever had the privilege of hosting.'
Review: Iconic Consciousness

Friday, July 29, 2011

REVIEW: "ICONIC CONSCIOUSNESS"

Funeral for Iraq War Soldier, Lake Orion, Michigan,2006
Eric Smith: Funeral for Iraq War Soldier, Lake Orion, Michigan, 2006


By Maylin Wilson Powell
The Albuquerque Journal
July 29, 2011

In our current era of citizen journalism, when amateur submissions are used on Internet news sites, technology and media consolidation have rendered the work of professional photojournalists a much more contingent endeavor. There is, of course, great value in the kind of rousing images that were taken by young women with cellphones during the heat of Egypt’s uprising and transmitted instantaneously around the planet. But, what of the men and women who consistently invested in firsthand photographic reporting over a number of years? The number of photojournalism images published by news organizations has shrunk dramatically in the shift of emphasis to more entertainment and lifestyle coverage. Without courageous and seasoned photojournalists actually going and talking to and taking pictures of people during the eruptions of wars and revolutions, our understanding of the world becomes more and more distorted.

“History’s Big Picture” exhibition at the Monroe Gallery of Photography is a gripping selection of images that brings home the power of visual storytelling. Hung chronologically from the 1930s to the present, these 58 photo images by the masters of 20th and 21st century photojournalism are predominately sobering. The overall impression of history and the big picture presented here tells a collective story of “Woe is us.”

More than a third of the images are from what is known as the “Golden Age” of photojournalism, the 1930s to the 1950s, when magazines including LIFE, Look and Sports Illustrated (USA), Paris Match, and the Berliner Illustrierte Zetung along with newspapers The Daily Mirror (London) and The New York Daily News built huge reputations and circulations based on photography by such artists as Robert Capa, Alfred Eisenstaedt and Margaret Bourke-White. The show opens with the work of these three celebrity photojournalists, including Eisenstaedt’s image of the self-satisfied architects of fascism, “The First Meeting of Mussolini and Hitler, Venice, June 1934,” along with an especially chilling image of the vampirish “Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Geneva, September, 1933,” the Reich’s minister of propaganda, himself a failed journalist and writer who organized the 1938 Kristallnacht for burning books and synagogues.

Capa’s “D-Day, Normandy, Omaha Beach, 1944″ is actually a great watery blur of a soldier swimming toward such massive implements for killing as fortified tank turrets and hundreds of thousands of land mines. Bourke-White is represented by two images –– the first captures three raggedy children in front of a raggedy sign that announces “Entering New Deal, Montana, 1936,” which was a mini-boomtown that faded away in the 1940s after the completion of a federally financed dam. Her second image is a riveting, crowded composition of “Buchenwald Prisoners, 1945″ each of them staring directly at us and still pressing forward across more than half a century from behind a metal fence on the day of their liberation. Scanning their figures and faces, it brings into question what the concepts of liberation and survival could mean to every one of these individuals and their descendants.

On view are five iconic images that were seen on the front pages of newspapers around the world the day after they were shot on location. In the case of Joe Rosenthal’s “Marines Raise the Flag on Iwo Jima, February 23, 1945,” the U.S. government also printed 3.5 million posters for free distribution, and this image was certainly the template for Thomas E. Franklin’s raising of the flag by “Firefighters at Ground Zero, Sept 11, 2001.”

As the gallery notes, other justly famous images of the turbulent and troubled 1960s still “shake and disquiet us,” including Robert Jackson’s “Jack Ruby Shoots Lee Harvey Oswald, November 24, 1964,” Eddie Adams’ “Execution in Saigon, South Vietnam, February 1, 1968,” John Olson’s “U.S. Marines at battle of Hue, Vietnam, 1968,” and Bill Eppridge’s assassination of Bobby Kennedy in 1968.

Mixed in with these images that are part of the collective consciousness of baby boomers and assembled to celebrate the gallery’s 10th year in Santa Fe (after 14 years in Manhattan) are many images that are no less powerful but that have never before been exhibited on gallery walls. All of the conventions of fine art composition and framing are deployed by these masters in the heat of the “decisive moment.” Cameras are angled upward to frame such famous men as Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr. as towering presences. Ground level shots with strong diagonals that signal things gone seriously awry including Eppridge’s splayed, spot-lit pieta of Bobby Kennedy attended by a waiter on bended knee, Loomis Dean’s tilting blasted “Mannequins after nuclear test at Yucca Flats, Nevada, May 1955,” and John Filo’s “May Vecchio grieving over slain student, Kent State, May 1970.” Unflinching, upright, straight-ahead perspective confers dignity and gives the viewer a place of privilege in such heart-wrenching situations as Ed Clark’s image of a tear-stained African American accordionist “Navy CPO Graham Jackson playing” a dirge for Franklin D. Roosevelt’s funeral cortege.






Sixties minimalism is used to great effect in Steve Schapiro’s austere and stripped-to-the-essential “White Women, Arkansas, 1961,” and in Eric Smith’s somber empty auditorium “Funeral for Iraqi War soldier, Lake Orion, Michigan, 2006.” Like Hiroshi Sugimoto’s late-1970s empty “Theatres” lit only by a streaming movie projector, Smith’s flag-draped, centrally illuminated casket with no one in attendance is an eerie metaphor, in this case, of offshore deaths that are intended to be kept out of sight and out of mind. In 2003, the Bush administration summarily banned all coverage of the bodies of U.S. troops returning from Iraq, a ban that was lifted in February 2009.


 Hadai Mizban: Iraq "War Games", Baghdad, Iraq, July 2, 2007 (c. AP)


That the gallery is almost always crowded with people talking about these images is due to a multitude of factors. The core reason is the consummate talent, quick response and fortitude of photojournalists working in often terrifying situations where their cameras make them prime targets. Are all those young viewers, who never had the opportunity to see them in print, a testimony to their thirst for truth, rather than entertainment? Certainly, it also has to do with the central location and welcoming open door of Monroe Gallery, a valuable addition to Santa Fe and a recognized international and persistent player in recovering and encouraging the best photojournalism.

In conjunction with this exhibition, the gallery is sponsoring an evening of conversation, next Friday, August 5, from 5 to 7 p.m., between two American photojournalists turned editors, Richard Stolley and Hal Wingo.

If you go WHAT: “History’s Big Picture”
WHERE: Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don GasparÂ
WHEN: Through Sept. 25.
HOURS: Monday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sunday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
CONTACT: 505.992-0800 or info@monroegallery.com


Demonstrators in a Works Progress Administration (WPA) Strike, 1937 (Time Inc.)
Carl Mydans:  Demonstrators in a Works Progress Administration (WPA) Strike, 1937 (c.Time Inc.)



Read more: ABQJournal Online » Photos Capture History http://www.abqjournal.com/main/2011/07/29/north/photos-capture-history.html#ixzz1TUabZmqX
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Thursday, July 21, 2011

SAVE THE DATE - PHOTOJOURNALISM: A CONVERSATION

Robert Jackson: Jack Ruby Shoots Lee Harvey Oswald,  Nov. 24, 1963

Time, Life, and People Editors Richard Stolley and Hal Wingo discuss Photojournalism and "History's Big Picture" on August 5


Santa Fe--Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, is pleased to present a very special evening of conversation between two of the preeminent names in American journalism, Richard Stolley and Hal Wingo. They will be discussing photojournalism – its
past, its present, and its future on Friday, August 5, 5 - 7 PM in conjunction with the exhibition "History's Big Picture". Seating is limited and on a first-come basis. The exhibition continues through September 25.

Over his 56-year career at Time Inc., Stolley spent 19 years at Life, capturing the events and people of our time, and placing them in perspective for our history. "Life," he once said, "wasn't simply about taking great pictures that knocked your socks off, but taking pictures of human contrast and emotion. We saw violence beyond human comprehension and outstanding incidents of human compassion, and we recorded it all for the readers with such skill that pictures we've seen a hundred times still evoke exactly the same emotions as they did when they were first published." After Life suspended publication in December of 1972, Stolley became the founding editor of People.

In a 33 year career with Time Incorporated, and as a journalist and editor at LIFE and PEOPLE WEEKLY magazines, Hal Wingo encountered some of the world's best known personalities, ranging from Charles Lindbergh to Lyndon Johnson to a wide range of film and television actors. His recollection of those people, from the silly to the inspirational, is a fascinating journey through the lives of those who have shaped our world. Wingo's career began with LIFE Magazine, where he was national correspondent and then far eastern regional editor in Hong Kong. He covered the Vietnam War for three years before returning to New York as senior editor of the magazine. In 1974 Hal Wingo was one of the founding editors of PEOPLE WEEKLY and its original news editor.

Photographers in "History's Big Picture" have captured dramatic moments in time and illustrate the power of photography to inform, persuade, enlighten and enrich the viewer's life.  Universally relevant, they reflect the past, the present, and the changing times. These unforgettable images are imbedded in our collective consciousness; they form a sort of shared visual heritage for the human race, a treasury of significant memories. Many of the photographs featured in this exhibition not only moved the public at the time of their publication, and continue to have an impact today, but set social and political changes in motion, transforming the way we live and think.


Monday, July 18, 2011

War games: Photographer chronicles evolution of kids' play in Baghdad


Iraq "War Games", Baghdad, Iraq, July 2, 2007 - by Hadi Mizban
Copyright AP

History's Big Picture

"They did not have the spirit of childhood in them... They acted like men."

That's an observation by AP photographer Hadi Mizban as he narrates an interactive presentation of his photographs and video chronicling the evolution of children's play in one of Baghdad's most violent neighborhoods.

For years, Mizban has covered clashes there between militants and soldiers — and along the way, he has gathered powerful images of children living at the doorstep of war.

"They played with weapons because whenever they opened their front gate they found people with weapons," he says, speaking in Arabic.

In his chilling images, kids act out roles they have witnessed. Young boys with toy guns take a cowering hostage. Others threaten a girl and snatch her doll. They move through narrow alleys with miniature walkie-talkies and rocket launchers that look all too real.

But lately Mizban has noticed changes in the kids: "They've gone from aggressive children to peaceful children."

As his video shows, they play soccer on the dusty streets now. They wear jerseys of international teams like Real Madrid and pretend to be famous players — instead of insurgents, soldiers or criminals.

In these images, the Baghdad kids could be happy kids anywhere.

Mizban reflects on his reporting about the youngest in society: "You have to document the situation without blinking. But when you shoot pictures of children playing, children laughing, there is hope."

Saturday, July 16, 2011

'This is one of the most powerful photographic shows I have ever seen and, certainly, in my opinion, the best Santa Fe has ever had the privilege of hosting.'

V-J Day in Times Square, New York, August 14, 1945 (? Time Inc)
Alfred Eisenstaedt: VJ-Day, Times Square, August 14, 1945


Via SantaFe.com
By Tom McQuire


16 July, 2011
Culture vulture
I have always been amazed with, not only the scope of the collection housed at Monroe Gallery of Photography – both in gallery shows and those items that rotate in and out of storage, but also the myriad ways in which owners Sidney and Michelle Monroe have placed these images in relevant shows throughout the ten years that the gallery has graced Don Gaspar, just off the Plaza. Their latest show, History's Big Picture, is by far the most compelling show they have ever mounted. Its appearance in this tenth year after Sid and Michelle moved their gallery to Santa Fe from Manhattan following the  Sept 11th attacks, takes us on a journey through the history of our country and the world, before and after the events of that fateful September day. Having seen the show on July 4th, I will be forever changed by the images on those walls.
With History's Big Picture Sid and Michelle mine the depth and breadth of Monroe Gallery's archives; combined with new, never-before exhibited photojournalism masterpieces, from the early 1920's to the present day.
From Ed Clark’s poignant image of a Navy CPO Graham Jackson playing in tribute to FDR’s coffin passing on a train, through the somber reality of Carl Mydans photograph of commuters on the 6:25 25 from Grand Central to Stamford, CT, November 22, 1963 reading of John Kennedy’s assassination and the euphoria of the events of Woodstock, 1969 by Amalie R. Rothschild; we arrive at Eric Smith’s haunting and thought-provoking image of an empty auditorium just prior to the funeral for a soldier who died in Iraq in 2006. In this show we see the great arc of our country’s history. This is one of the most powerful photographic shows I have ever seen and, certainly, in my opinion, the best Santa Fe has ever had the privilege of hosting. Bravo Sid and Michelle!
The show remains up at Monroe through September 25th.

Friday, July 15, 2011

A PHOTO EDITOR: GALLERIST INTERVIEW

Che Guevara on CBS' Face the Nation, 1964
Photograph by Irving Haberman

Via APhotoEditor

A Photo Editor (APE) is Rob Haggart, the former Director of Photography for Men's Journal and Outside Magazine. We count on the site as a daily must-read.

Interview With Gallerist Sidney Monroe
July 15, 2011
Contributor Jonathan Blaustein interviews Sidney Monroe owner of the Monroe Gallery in Santa Fe, NM.

JB: How did you get involved in the business?

SM: It was accidental, almost. After college, I worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Then, I started working in contemporary galleries in New York.

JB: Were you in the photo department at the Met?

SM: I was not. I was in the retail department. It was a fascinating time, because it was at the time of the Tutankhamun exhibition, and it was the first time they put a satellite retail operation in the exhibition, as opposed to just in the gift shop. It spurred their entire retail model. I can’t remember the numbers, but in the three years I was there, sales went from like $3 million to $50 million, because of the expansion of the retail model. This was before they had the retail stores in airports and such.

JB: So is this in the 80′s?

SM: This is in the early 80′s, yeah. I had been a business and economics major in college, and always had an interest in the arts. My circle of friends was always artistically inclined. I was completely talentless…

JB: Entirely, perfectly talentless?

SM: Entirely talentless, but I was always in a circle of creative people. When I took that job at the Met, it was a beginning opportunity in the retail department as they were expanding. Within a year, I became a manger of the book shop. In the book store, you could take anything you wanted to read, you could purchase at at discount, and I immersed myself in learning about art. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is an incredible place.

JB: It’s my favorite museum in the world. I studied art more there, when I lived in New York, than even in graduate school.

SM: Anyone who’s been there knows you can spend hours, days wandering, and still not see it all. And I had access to the catacombs, because there’s storage under Central Park. You go down in there, and there’s a Rodin sculpture with a tarp over it. Crates with you can’t imagine what might be in there.

JB: I would kill for a chance to see that. If any of your people end up reading this, I want a secret tour.

SM: I’m sure it’s all changed. Especially in a Post-9/11 world. This was the 80′s, things were very loose, and it was a great training ground.

JB: So you moved from there to the photo gallery world?

SM: The contemporary gallery world.

JB: Where?


Mother and Child in Hiroshima, Four Months After the Atomic Bomb Dropped
                                                     Photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt

SM: I started at a gallery that’s no longer in existence, and quite frankly I can’t remember the name. Then I went to The Circle Gallery, which was a commercial galley specializing in contemporary prints. For a while, they were kind of legendary for having a retail model for a gallery, opening different branches in other cities. That’s where I cut my teeth in the art business. That led to an opportunity to meet Alfred Eisenstadt. He was in his 80′s, and had done some museum exhibits. But he had never done a gallery/selling exhibit. Somehow he had gotten in contact with the owner of The Circle Gallery. I was then the director, and became involved in talking with Eisenstadt about doing an exhibit. My wife-to-be and I got to go up to the Time-Life Building, and sit across from Eisie at his desk. We were both in our 20′s, he was in his 80′s, and it was like a lightbulb went off. I was sitting across from a man who has witnessed history.That’s when I got hooked. We did this exhibit, it traveled nationally, and was huge at the time. It was on CNN, Good Morning America, all the morning talk shows.

JB: Had any of the LIFE photographers shown their work in a gallery context before that?

SM: Not so much. Time-Life had a small gallery in the building, and they would routinely do exhibits for the photographers, but nowhere near the scale of a public gallery. Eisie was a very, very smart man. Of all the LIFE photographers, he published dozens of books. He was ahead of his time in that he understood that photojournalism should be more broadly available to the public, as opposed to just existing in a magazine. I firmly believe this drove the last 10 years of his life. He worked on supervising his prints, traveling exhibitions, doing interviews, meeting the public, from the time he was 85 until he died at 96.

That set off a spark for me, and within a couple of years after that, I had two partners and we opened a gallery in Soho on Grand St. It was just devoted to photography, with an emphasis on photojournalism. That gallery opened in the fall of 1996. We did several shows with LIFE magazine photographers, and presented the first ever exhibition from the archives of Margaret Bourke-White’s estate. Fast-forwarding, after 9/11, being in that location was no longer viable for commerce. My wife and I decided to leave Manhattan, come to Santa Fe, and start over.

JB: Why did you choose Santa Fe?

SM: It’s a good question, and we’re just realizing that we’ve been here 10 years, now, and it’s gone by very quickly. We couldn’t find a location in Manhattan quick enough to relocate. The location we had on Grand St was the quintessential Soho gallery. Cast-iron columns, 16 ft ceilings, everything you would want in a beautiful gallery. Already the migration had already started towards Chelsea. We looked, and all that would be available, if you weren’t one of the big players, would be on the 6th, 7th, 8th floor of a building in Chelsea, and I didn’t like that model. We have always believed in photojournalism, and that it needs to be seen by the public. We’re very passionate about spreading the message, so the public is integral to what we do.

We’d visited New Mexico, and I have family roots here. We knew there was a vibrant art scene in Santa Fe. We did some research, and depending on the data, it was either number two or three art market behind Manhattan. Quite frankly, we took a leap of faith. 9/11 happened. We decided in October, we moved over Christmas break, and we opened the gallery in Santa Fe in April of 2002. We honed down very tightly on photojournalism. That’s all we’ve focused on showing here.

JB: Are there other galleries now that have followed your lead and do what you do, or do you still feel like you’ve got a unique position in the market?


Bobby Kennedy campaigns in IN during May of 1968, with various aides and friends:  former prizefighter Tony Zale and (right of Kennedy) N.F.L. stars Lamar Lundy, Rosey Grier, and Deacon Jones
Photograph by Bill Eppridge

SM: I think we accidentally found a unique niche. Accidentally, because it followed from a passion. Something sparked, and that’s the direction I went in, and at the time nobody else was really doing it. Now there have always been some photo galleries that show some photojournalism in with their other programming, but to my knowledge, there is still nobody doing pure photojournalism, and that’s really become what we’re known for. Both within the collecting and museum community, and the public gallery-going community as well.

JB: I’m sitting here in the gallery, surrounded by artifacts of American history, and I know you said already that you developed a relationship with Alfred Eisenstadt, and that was the catalyst for the gallery, but how did you develop relationships with the other photographers whose work you show? Especially because I’ve got to imagine you’re working with Estates, because many of these people have passed on.

SM: That’s correct.

–(editor’s note: Right here, we were interrupted by a strange woman who took the time to complain that there were no photographs of dancers on the wall. She felt slighted. Mr. Monroe patiently answered her questions, and treated her with respect, despite the fact that she was behaving like a complete nutbar.)

SM: Partly, it was fortunate timing. When we began, many of these photographers were still alive. Eisenstadt introduced us to many of his colleagues at LIFE magazine, Carl Mydans was still living, as were many of the other LIFE photographers. It’s almost like a fraternity. One of the things we’ve been so passionate about is getting these photographers to make prints while they’re still alive. As a photojournalist, unlike a lot of other photographers, they never considered making prints during their lifetime. They were on assignment. They had a job to to. They got their assignment from LIFE or LOOK or whomever, they went out in the field, shot their work, sent their film back, and chances are they never even saw it. It was edited, and used or not used in a magazine.

When we met some of these other photographers, particularly with Carl Mydans, and we suggested that they could go back through the work and see it fresh. He’s seen it in a magazine, or a book, but to sit down with a negative and a printer…the printer would say, “Carl, you can make it this big or that big, we use different paper, crop it this way or that.” It opened up a whole new possibility for them in doing their work. We’ve met these photographers, we’ve encouraged them to do this, but a lot of times they’re hesitant. It’s just not something that’s in their thought process.

JB: Then. But probably we would say that’s changed.


Street Execution of a Viet Cong Prisoner, Saigon, 1968
Photograph by Eddie Adams

SM: That has changed. And now you get a lot more photographers who say, “I want to do what he did.” It really was like a fraternity, and one by one, we either knew about photographers, sometimes we’d talk to them and they’d be resistant. I knew Eddie Adams way back when in New York. Eddie was infamous for refusing galleries. I never really approached him, but I’d always talk to him about it. Within a few months of his passing, his wife came to us and asked us to represent the Estate. It’s a combination of people coming to us, people we’ve put out feelers to, and it’s a very close-knit community. Almost all of our photographers are colleagues of some sort. Sometimes to almost a humorous point. We did an exhibit once, and a photographer found out he was hanging next to another photographer, and he said, “Son-of-a-bitch, I hated him then, and I don’t want to hang next to him in your gallery.” So we moved the exhibit around a little bit.

JB: You did?

SM: We did. My wife likes to say “We work for them.” And that’s true. A lot of times they’re elderly, and we feel very privileged. It’s important to get their work represented, particularly while they’re alive, and to get prints made that will represent a legacy for the future.

JB: You developed a relationship with a network of photographers who knew one another, and as your reputation built, they came to want to work with you. But what about the collectors themselves? How did you develop a relationship with a network of people who wanted to buy these prints.

SM: It started very innocently. This is what we were passionate about. This is what we put on the walls. This is what we want to talk about. And it was slow going in the beginning. We had many times where we had exhibits up, and the established photo collector would be like, “Gee, I don’t know about your gallery,” and then they’d look at it, and they’d say, “But this is photojournalism?” And we were like, “Yeah, isn’t it great?” A lot of what we’ve done, is that we’ve educated people about photojournalism.
Moving to Santa Fe was very liberating, in a way, because in the New York art world, there’s a tremendous pressure. What’s hot? What’s the next big thing? More so in the art world, but it does also permeate into the photo world. So seeing old history on the wall isn’t very sexy. Moving to Santa Fe, there’s more freedom, it seems, of peoples’ perceptions of art in general. We’ve tried to create an environment where the photographs speak for themselves.

JB: So most of your collectors have been into the space? Are most of the people local to Santa Fe?


Martin Luther King, Alabama, 1965
Photograph by Steve Schapiro

SM: No. We have a very wide base. Fortunately, having been in business in Manhattan for so many years, a lot of those clients follow us. Of course, so much can be done in the virtual world now. It doesn’t replace the experience, but certainly they can follow the imagery. We also do photo fairs in New York and Los Angeles. Often, it comes from the first conversation you have with a person about why they’re having a visceral reaction to a particular image. Being complete academic nerds, we can recite everything that was ever vaguely relevant about a particular photographer. It’s about cultivating relationships and knowledge. You touched on the retail model. I believe it’s an important model for a photography gallery. And by retail, I don’t mean retail selling.

JB: Well, that was my next question. Because we’re in downtown Santa Fe, and during the course of this interview, I’d say 25 people have already been into the gallery, and an additional 40 have been looking at pictures through the window. I think some people believe that people come in and buy things off the wall, and other people think that’s a fantasy. I was hoping we might be able to address, from your own standpoint, how it actually works.

SM: Personally, our goal is to spread the gospel of photojournalism, so getting the work seen by the public is critical. It’s a part of what we do, and another part is to educate. That doesn’t mean we preach, but I’m available to anyone who wants to ask questions, as we saw earlier, from mundane to serious. There’s no screening process of who gets to talk to me.

JB: Is that because we’re in Santa Fe? I wrote some things that were critical of some of the galleries in Chelsea for that reason. The approachability factor is nil. Here you’re talking about the fact that you’re almost perfectly approachable.

SM: That was our posture in New York. It’s just who I am and the way I work. It is bothersome sometimes, but that’s just the way it is. And I have to say that it has resulted in some incredibly long-term relationships with very important collectors. I think it’s a thing in the art world, and everybody has their model, and they can do it the way they want. But by design, I want the work to be seen, I want people to be able to ask questions. The retail model for us is that we’re open to the public, and we’re here to show photography. Both in New York and Santa Fe, we’re connected to schools, workshops, communities. Santa Fe is wonderful because of the Santa Fe Workshops, and Center as well. Many instructors bring their classes in here.

JB: You’re talking about retail as a way to engage with the public and have an exhibition space that enables the work to be seen. I’m curious, a bit, about the alternative way of viewing the concept of retail. The idea that people are going to walk in off the street, buy something off the wall, and take it home with them. As opposed to sales coming through built-up relationships over time. How often do you find that members of the public cross over to become collectors, as opposed to the public being appreciators?

SM: It’s hard to quantify, but obviously it’s a very small percentage. But just yesterday, a young couple came in and asked about a Margaret Bourke-White photograph we had exhibited seven years ago. They got married here seven years ago, and came back again on vacation. They asked about the photograph and they bought it.

JB: So it happens, but it’s the exception. It’s not the basis of your business.

SM: No. It’s not the basis of our business.

JB: Nor could it be?

SM: No. Nor could it be. Or should it be.

JB: Right, but in a sense, we’re talking about the exhibition divested from commerce. The exhibition is about getting the work seen, which is not that different from a museum or a public space.

SM: That’s exactly right. A lot of people, as they exit the gallery, say this is like a museum.

JB: As you said before, by design. You could be a private dealer with a small office, if you wanted to be.

Mary Vecchio grieving over stain student, Kent State, May 4, 1970
Photograph by John Filo
SM: Absolutely. And we curate based upon our agenda, which is to tell a story. A lot of times, you get comments from the public, “How do you know which one’s going to sell?” Well, that never even enters into the equation. And on the flip side, there are a lot of times where we have controversial pictures that upset people, and they say, “Why do you put that on the wall?” Because it’s part of the story. It’s very important.

JB: It’s a perfect opportunity to ask, you’re opening your big summer exhibition called “History’s Big Picture” on July 1st. It’s not on the wall today, so I thought you might be able to tell us a bit about that.

SM: Curating is always interesting, because you’re juggling dozens of ideas. It occurred to us that this year is our 10th year anniversary in Santa Fe, during which time we built our photojournalism focus. And it occurred to us that we’ve got this incredible stable of photojournalism that we could curate from and make “History’s Big Picture.” The hardest part is editing, because we could do ten exhibits called “History’s Big Picture” and not duplicate any images.

JB: Really? How big an archive do you have? Given what you just said, how many pictures do you have access to?

SM: Jonathan, I couldn’t even tell you…

JB: Thousands?

SM: Thousands. We have archives in the gallery, we have off-site location here and in Manhattan, and we have our photographers who maintain archives.

JB: Sure. I interrupted, but you were talking about “History’s Big Picture.” As a curator, that’s kind of a broad theme. What did that mean to you?

SM: The pictures that tell the story of history. You have to edit your timeline for history, of course.

JB: American history?

SM: Primarily history as it relates to America. We chose 1930 as the starting point, and wanted to come as close to the present as possible. We have several images from 2006, 2007 and 2008.

JB: Am I correct that for the recent work, you’re showing Nina Berman’s pictures?

SM: We are.

JB: At APE, we spoke to her earlier this year. She’s fantastic. How did you come to get her work in the show?

SM: She is fantastic. She’s somebody I’ve admired. For photojournalists today, they’re obviously working in a challenging environment, and a changed one as far as the media goes. In the heyday, you had vehicles like LIFE or LOOK, where that work was published, the photographer became known, and the public saw the work. In today’s media world, getting images shown is very challenging.

JB: You mean getting images seen?

SM: Yes, getting images seen.

JB: It’s a distinction we could probably talk about for an hour, but I think most people reading this will probably know the difference.

SM: Of course. The visual clutter that’s prevalent today. And the change of the economy of scale of the media. So Nina is one of the many contemporary photojournalists that I’ve known about, followed and admired. I wasn’t sure how we could show her work and do it justice, but in the context of this exhibit, I felt that we’ve got to have it. She was so gracious and accommodating, and it was an honor to have five of her photographs in the exhibit. We’ve got two from “Homeland Security” and three from the “Marine Wedding” series.

JB: Including the Ty Zeigler wedding portrait?

SM: Including the wedding portrait.

JB: Which I saw on the wall in New York last year, which led to the interview with Nina. So we’ve come full circle. That picture will now be on the wall here in Santa Fe all summer long.

SM: And I’m prepared. That picture’s going to elicit a lot of, I don’t know if controversy is the right word. But in the context of a public exhibition, in summer, which is high traffic tourist season in Santa Fe, the good side is obviously this show will get a lot of exposure. And the other side is that there are some very difficult photographs in this exhibit. But that’s history. That’s reality.

JB: Sure. Well, I know that everyone hates to be asked what’s your favorite, or what’s the best, or this or that. But I thought maybe if I put you on the spot, you might be able to pull out some old-school war story from back in the day that somebody told you that you still tell at dinner parties when you’ve had four glasses of wine.

SM: There’s a few.

JB: I’m sure there are many. But can you give us one?

Winston Churchill, Liverpool, 1951
Photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt


SM: One of my all time favorites happens to be about Eisenstadt. This was at an opening for one of Eisie’s shows. He was a small man, and he was very confident of his success, shall we say. So this was at a big opening, and lots of big collectors were invited. I had a collector who’d bought several of Eisie’s pictures, and he said he’d like to meet Eisie. I said absolutely, and he asked if his son could come too. I said “Sure,” and made the introduction. Eisie was always very gracious, but he didn’t like to hang out with people too much. So the man said, “Mr. Eisenstadt, I just bought my son a camera, and I told him, now you can take pictures like Eisenstadt.” And Eisenstadt just stopped and gave him this stare, and he said, “My dear sir, I have ten fingers, and I cannot play the piano like Horowitz.” At that point, I said thank you very much and escorted him away.

JB: It’s kind of dry.

SM: It’s very dry. There’s the face value that says anybody can take pictures. And it’s a very good point, especially nowadays, where everybody’s a photographer. It’s the topic du jour now. I’ve seen so many articles about it.

JB: Me too, so we don’t even have to go there. But if you don’t mind, I’d like to ask one more question. What advice would you give to someone who wanted to get into this part of the business? What do you think is the pathway into the gallery industry in 2011?

SM: First and foremost, it has to be your passion. Unfortunately in the world we’re in today, a lot of people glamorize the business. They think it would be so glamorous to have a fancy gallery, and it has to be your passion.

JB: So not everyone gets to blow lines with Naomi Campbell?

SM: No. But we had a great exhibit back in New York with a good friend of mine named Mick Rock, who’s really become quite successful now. He was known as the man who shot the 70′s. He did all the rock and roll photography. He was Bowie’s photographer and Lou Reed’s photographer. I got to know him, and I convinced him to do an exhibit. So when we did the show, we had Bowie, and Iman and Lou Reed hanging out. I would always say, “I’m never going to get rid of that desk chair,” because Bowie and Lou Reed sat in that chair.

But that’s not why you get into the business, is my point. If you’re passionate about the work, it will be rewarding no matter what, because you’re doing what you enjoy. And that’s the bottom line. It’s a job, and it’s work. It’s a fabulous job, and it’s fabulous work, but it’s a job.

If you’ve got the passion, the first step is to find your photographers. There’s a partnership between a gallery and the photographer/artist. You’re in it together. It’s not one or the other, it’s both. When I sell a print and call up the photographer to tell them, that’s a celebration we share. The next thing that follows is the relationships with your clients. And then you take it from there.

by A Photo Editor on July 15, 2011

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

"Middle America Fights Our Wars"



Leenawee County Fair, Michigan, 2007
Eric Smith: Leenawee County Fair, Michigan, 2007



From History's Big Picture


Eric Smith has gone in search of Middle America, which he defines as the people living in the nation’s small towns and the less-than-glamorous cities far from the coasts. “Middle America drives our economy, defines popular culture, and fights our wars.” 

Smith isn’t an economist, and he admits that perhaps he’s wrong about the cultural impact of the spending power of small towns. But an Associated Press study has confirmed his belief about their importance to the Iraq war: half of U.S. troops killed in Iraq came from communities with fewer than 25,000 people. And one in five soldiers hails from a town with fewer than 5,000 residents, according to AP.



Smith took a picture at afuneral in a high- school gymnasium in Morley, Mich. “The town’s so small that two towns had to come together to build a high school, but it was standing room only with 500 bikers lined up outside,” he said. “A lot of these kids were football players and popular. They are 18, 19, 20, or 21 — fresh out of high school — so the whole school shows up.”





Funeral for Iraq War Soldier, Morley, Michigan,2006
Eric Smith: Funeral for Iraq War Soldier, Morley, Michigan,2006




Tuesday, July 5, 2011

"A photograph can change the world and move mountains"

From History's Big Picture:

"Some assignments have been fun, others have been important photography because they came from the heart. A photograph can change the world and move mountains. It is through a photograph that we remember people and places the way they were. Some of the pictures I have taken tore my heart out. I have seen all kinds of things in my life and I have walked away from taking many pictures. I found out that I put myself in other people’s shoes and often feel that I became my subjects. When someone was wounded I felt the pain. I got tired of crying. Each year we have a memorial service for my friends killed in Vietnam and I still cry.”  --Eddie Adams

Sunday, July 3, 2011

"I am making a record of historic times"

From History's Big Picture:

“Sometimes people have asked me why I devoted so much of my life to to covering these terrible scenes, these disasters, these wars. And there is an important reason. When I began as a photojournalist I was interested in the history that was developing around me, whether it was the hundreds and hundreds of people I photographed who were the homeless wandering along the roads during the days of the Farm Security Administration, or other pretty heart-rending scenes that I saw in those days.

Why did I pursue those scenes ? Because they were evidence of one of the most important developments of my time, and I have been attracted all my life to important historical developments Some were good, lots of them were not. And I had and still have a compulsion to record history. Remember, after LIFE was born, we went through years of war. Now it is true that I could have done what some photojournalists did and in some way avoided war. But I have never avoided covering a development of our time because it threatened me. I do not think of myself as being tough. Determined is a much better description. It has never been too hot or too cold or too hard or too tiring for me to keep on going on a story worth telling. And war is one of those stories.

I want to make it clear it is not because I liked war. They were awful periods. I have often been in places where it was so terrible, where I was so frightened, where I could criticize myself for being there by saying what are you doing, why are you here? The answer always has been that what I am doing is important, and that's why I am here. --Carl Mydans