Mélanie Light: Thoughts on Photojournalism

Be certian to read today's article by Mélanie Light - "Thoughts on Photojournalism" in today's La Lettre de la Photographie.




"War is troubling. Reporting on war is equally troubling. Is there any sane way to report on insanity?"

"I have no words for what I saw there"

Kaho Imai, Watanoha Elementary School

By eyecurious

Published: 15 June 2011
 
After the earthquake and subsequent tsunami struck the Tohoku region of region on 11 March 2011, the photographer Aichi Hirano decided to distribute 50 disposable cameras to the people in the shelters around Ishinomaki. He succeeded in retrieving 27 of these 50 cameras and subsequently published the results on a website created for the project http://www.rolls7.com/ This is a piece I wrote about the Rolls Tohoku project. It was first published in Foam magazine issue #27, ‘Report’, which has just been released (the issue is really an fascinating exploration of what reporting means in photography today… don’t miss it). This summer the museum of photography in Stockholm, Fotografiska, will be exhibiting the Rolls Tohoku project from 7 July to 28 August. Rolls had a deep impact on me (as you will see from the following) and I urge you to take the time to spend some time looking at these photographs.

Japan lives with the constant threat of natural disasters. Located in a highly unstable sector of the Pacific Ring of Fire, it experiences hundreds, if not thousands of earthquakes every year and has become the best-prepared country in the world for quakes and the tsunamis which can follow. But nothing could have prepared the population for the gigantic quake and tsunami that devastated the Tohoku region of north-eastern Japan.

The earthquake and tsunami of 11 March 2011 was very likely the most highly-mediatized natural disaster ever. Although a large tsunami hit parts of Southeast Asia in 2004, very few images emerged of the brief moments of impact of the tsunami, but rather of the destruction that it left behind. Amateur footage was released in Japan shortly after the quake and within minutes the Japanese national broadcaster NHK sent helicopters out in anticipation of the tsunami that was expected to hit the Tohoku coastline. The resulting images showed the black wave swallowing everything in its path. Over the next few hours more footage was released, most of it shot by amateurs, showing the impact of the wave up and down the Tohoku coast. The spellbinding images, which played back on television and computer screens around the world, captured the brutal power and relentlessness of the tsunami. Some of the footage was also imbued with an eerie sense of dread as houses and cars floated down streets that had been full of activity just a few minutes before. The scale of the devastation quickly became apparent and, although the number of confirmed deaths was initially low, the images suggested that a huge death toll was inevitable.

Yet, within days the situation in Tohoku had all but disappeared from the international media as the troubling developments at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant began to monopolize the headlines. The towns of Minami Sanriku, Ishinomaki, Miyagi and Sendai that had been the center of attention until then receded into the shadow of Fukushima. A little over a week after the quake, I picked up a free newspaper on the Paris metro. The cover was a photograph of the Eiffel Tower on a hazy day, presumably taken weeks or months before. The headline read, ‘The Radioactive Cloud Arrives in France.’ The story had shifted from the tragedy that had befallen the people of Tohoku to the fear of what might happen to ‘us’. Within a week potassium iodide tablets had sold out as far away as Finland and the United States. Words like ‘meltdown’ or ‘radiation’ are so charged with meaning composited from science fiction and the very real horrors of Chernobyl or the fall-out from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that there was little space left in the collective imagination for scientific fact. As a narrative, the nuclear threat was infinitely more powerful: this was no longer just another tale of people’s suffering somewhere on the other side of the globe, but an invisible and very personal threat to each and every one of us.

Masaki Abe, Shidukawa Elementary School

Although, I have never lived in Japan I have visited the country regularly in recent years. My involvement with Japanese photography somehow made the events of 11 March feel deeply personal. In the days following the disaster I watched the news obsessively, hungry for any information at all, but finding very little. In the era of the 24-hour news cycle, information and stories are constantly recycled and updated, as the same images, the same tiny scraps of information get repeated over and over every hour. It was not until I heard the personal stories, of friends—a dear friend trapped in a bullet train in a freezing, pitch-black tunnel for over 24 hours and then travelling for two days to get back home, another who lost his mother to the giant wave and whose native town was totally destroyed—or indeed strangers—an 80-year-old woman and her grandson who survived together for nine days after the quake and who, when asked what he would like to be when he is older, replied ‘an artist’—that I was able to get beyond the huge, abstract idea of a natural disaster. As with these stories, the photographs in the Rolls project were the first that I saw that went beyond the surface of this tragic event.

When the earthquake hit on 11 March, a young photographer, Aichi Hirano, was showing his work in an exhibition entitled Rolls of One Week. Hirano explains, ‘At that time, I felt so powerless, being in the same country yet unable to do anything to reach out and help directly.’ To combat his sense of helplessness, he decided to distribute fifty disposable cameras to survivors displaced by the tsunami who had been evacuated to shelters in Ishinomaki, Miyagi prefecture. Hirano provided some loose directions on sheets of paper: ‘Please take photos of things you see with your eyes, things you want to record, remember, people near you, your loved ones, things you want to convey… please do so freely. And please enjoy the process if you can, even if it’s just a little bit.’ Of the 50 cameras he distributed, Hirano was able to retrieve 27, which he uploaded in their entirety to the website http://www.rolls7.com/

Anonymous, around Ishinomaki

Until Rolls, most of the images emerging from the Tohoku region focused on the spectacular devastation caused by the tsunami – cars piled on top of houses, forests of debris where villages had once stood. In the face of disaster, when we cannot believe our eyes, photography has often been used to fill that breach: to provide a visual record that captures events so shocking or spectacular that they are impossible to digest. Perhaps the most powerful recent examples were taken from satellites. Several news websites created an interactive display superimposing a satellite image taken on 12 March over an image taken some time before the tsunami. By swiping across the image the user shifts between before and after, revealing the huge areas of land that had been wiped clean by the wave. Although images like these are undeniably powerful, they have a strangely impersonal quality. They provide a macro perspective of the disaster, a kind of quantification of the scale of the devastation, but one which gives us no insight into the individual lives of those affected. By contrast, Rolls offers a deeply personal vision of the disaster from the perspective of those who have been directly affected. These images do not just show the pain and suffering of the victims, but also their joy, their relief and even the boredom and tedium that they experience as they seek to pass the time in their evacuation shelters.

For each roll we know only the photographer’s name, sex and whether they are an adult or a child. But perhaps it is wrong to use the term ‘photographer’. The very point of these images is that they were taken by amateurs. In contrast to the spectacle of the images that appear in the press, there is little that is at all remarkable about these photographs. In one roll a boy has photographed his stuffed toys one by one on a mat. In another (anonymous) roll, a donkey appears tied to a tree that is just beginning to blossom. The rolls are made up of small fragments like these which we cannot understand beyond the knowledge that they are parts of individuals’ lives, details which to them seemed important enough to photograph. They do not employ the visual language of photo-reportage or of fine art photography to convey a specific message. Their quiet, artless, unselfconscious quality makes these images all the more powerful, investing them with the directness of words spoken by a young child. Although images of destruction are also present, it is not the subject of the photographs, but instead a visual backdrop to the ordinary details of these people’s lives. In one roll such images appear as blurry glimpses from the window of a moving car, as if the reality of the destruction had yet to sink in.

Hirano’s exhortation to the survivors to ‘enjoy the process if you can’ can be seen in the shots, particularly those taken by children. We see laughter, friendship, play – elements that do not appear in conventional images of disaster, but which provide a fuller picture of the reality of life in its aftermath. These are not photographs of what has happened to these people or images that construct a narrative that seeks to make the disaster understandable. Instead, they form a part of people’s ongoing struggle to digest and comprehend what they have experienced and, more simply, of the need to carry on with their lives.

Masahiro Yamada, Ishinomaki day-care center

During my short visit to Japan in early April a powerful aftershock struck the Miyagi region. At the time, I was with a friend in a bar in Tokyo, after having been to yozakura, the tradition of viewing the cherry blossoms by night. This was my first experience of an earthquake: the entire room swayed back and forth for a few seconds before the shock subsided. Although everyone stayed calm, not moving from their seats, the recent events made the tension palpable. We spent the next minutes anxiously watching television for news from Miyagi. My friend was aware of the damage this aftershock would cause, particularly as she was due to visit the area soon afterwards. A few days later I received a message in which she wrote, “I have no words for what I saw there.” This failure of words has its parallel in photography: rarely do images effectively describe an event of this magnitude. These rolls of film from Tohoku come closer than anything else I have seen yet.

Photographic hep for Japan

MARGARET BOURKE-WHITE: BORN 107 YEARS AGO JUNE 14

Margaret Bourke-White working atop the Chrysler Building, NY 1934

Photographed by her assistant, Oscar Graubner


Margaret Bourke-White was born on June 14, 1904, in New York City, and graduated from Cornell University in 1927. Choosing photography as a profession, she immediately began her dramatic career by experimenting with industrial subjects.


By 1929, Bourke-White’s reputation attracted the attention of the publisher Henry Luce, who engaged her as an associate editor for his FORTUNE magazine. Bourke-White was FORTUNE’s only photographer for the eight months prior to the publication of the first issue in February 1930. Throughout the next several years, there was no location or type of photography too difficult or too mundane for Bourke-White. She covered assignments throughout the United States, and traveled to Germany and Russia. In what would be just one of many “firsts," Bourke-White became the first foreign photographer allowed to take pictures of Russian industry.

Between 1930 and 1936, Bourke-White would return to Russia twice more and become the first foreign cinematographer to leave the country with motion pictures of its industry. In 1934 she photographed the Dust Bowl, and in 1935 began aviation photography for TWA and Eastern Airlines. In 1936, Bourke-White joined Peter Stackpole, Tom McAvoy, and Alfred Eisenstaedt as the first staff photographers for LIFE magazine. Her photograph of the great Fort Peck dam appeared on the first issue’s cover.

Bourke-White went on to cover the world, traveling to Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Turkey, Syria, Egypt, China, and again to the Soviet Union. She was the only U.S. photographer present in Moscow as the Germans attacked Russia in 1941. Bourke-White became the first woman accredited as a war correspondent in 1942, and became the first woman to accompany an Air Force bombing mission (1943).

 

 Margaret Bourke-White In Her High Altitude Flight Suit (holding aerial camera, standing in front of B-17 "Flying Fortress" bomber), 1943. (c.Time Inc.)


In 1944, Bourke-White covered World-War II from Italy, eventually joining Patton’s army as it traveled through Germany in 1945. Among Bourke-White’s most haunting and memorable work are the pictures taken at Buchenwald.

 

Margaret Bourke-White: Buchenwald Prisoners, 1945 (c. Time Inc.)

Assignments for LIFE took Bourke-White throughout India, Japan, Korea, and South Africa. Bourke-White authored several books, including You Have Seen Their Faces, Shooting The Russian War, Purple Heart Valley, and Halfway To Freedom. There are numerous books written about her life and work as well as a 1960 made-for-television movie. She fought a heroic 20-year battle with Parkinson’s disease prior to her death in 1971.

Bourke-White’s photographs are included in many important museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 1998, Sidney Monroe curated the the first significant exhibit of her work in many years at his New York gallery that featured the premiere of Estate authorized prints, and the centennial anniversary of her birth was celebrated with the exhibition “Margaret Bourke-White At 100” at Monroe Gallery of Photography, April 2 – June 27, 2004.

Several of Bourke-White's iconic photographs will be included in the exhibition "History's Big Picture", Monroe Gallery of Photography, July 1 - September 25, 2011.

ART BASEL 2011

Art 42 Basel takes place June 15 – 19, 2011.


The world's premier international art show for Modern and contemporary works, Art Basel features nearly 300 leading galleries from North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa. More than 2,500 artists, ranging from the great masters of Modern art to the latest generation of emerging stars, are represented in the show's multiple sections. The exhibition includes the highest-quality paintings, sculptures, drawings, installations, photographs, video and editioned works.

62,500 people attended Art 41 Basel, the last edition of this favorite rendezvous for the global artworld, including art collectors, art dealers, artists, curators and other art enthusiasts.

With its world-class museums, outdoor sculptures, theaters, concert halls, idyllic medieval old town and new buildings by leading architects, Basel ranks as a culture capital, and that cultural richness helps put the Art Basel week on the agenda for art lovers from all over the globe. During Art Basel, a fascinating atmosphere fills this traditional city, as the international art show is reinforced with exhibitions and events all over the region.

Located on the banks of the Rhine, at the border between Switzerland, France and Germany, Basel is easily navigated by foot and trams. On this website you can find practical information about visiting Art Basel, photos of past shows, press releases, and information concerning participating galleries and artists. To stay current on developments for the 2011 show, join our mailing list and you will receive updates as information becomes available.

Visitor Information

Exhibitors

First Glance: LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph

Courtesy Massimo Vitali

The beach at Coney Island, NY from his latest book Natural Habitats exhibited at Chroma Arts Project June 3-26

Via TIME Light Box

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

By Vaughn Wallace

First Glance: LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph


An international photo festival in Charlottesville, Virginia? On paper, it seems an unlikely fit.


“Don’t kid yourself,” warns Scott Thode, editor of VII The Magazine and a guest curator of the LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph. “There’s a real appreciation for photography here.”

After one year off, the three-day photography event returns to Charlottesville, Virginia June 9-11 with a lineup of exhibitions, outdoor projections and a lecture series curated by Thode and Kathy Ryan, director of photography for The New York Times Magazine.

Courtesy Shannon Wells

A captivated audience watches WORKS, the final Saturday night projection at the 2009 festival.


Each year’s festival centers around three core photographers, called INSight artists, who present an exhibition and participate in on-stage interviews to speak about their process, inspiration and work. This year’s honorees are Antonin Kratochvil, Massimo Vitali, and Nan Goldin, —all artists presenting work during the festival’s MASTERS Talks series. Each of their shows will focus on the theme of “HOME.”


Thode says the festival theme came to him as he was working on Kratochvil’s show (titled “Homeland”)—the photographer had just moved back to Prague after 40 years of exile. “This whole idea occurred to me that he was going home, and this idea of home, and of building his show around the concept of home came to me,” says Thode. “It’s a very loose concept… it’s about friends, it’s about coming back and having a place of meeting and carrying about each other… things like that.”

Though the title of Goldin’s exhibition, “Scopophilia” is derived from the Greek words “scopo” (to look) and “philia” (love of friends), her collection of images was actually inspired by a moment of solitude in the Louvre museum in Paris. Meanwhile, Vitali’s exhibition examines human communities, with several images depicting groups of people in nature.

Mary Ellen Mark, Christopher Anderson, Ashley Gilbertson, LaToya Ruby Frazier and Steve McCurry, among other photographers, will present work and participate in the nightly MASTERS Talk Series.

Courtesy Zach Wiginton

The 2009 TREES exhibit featured wildlife photographer To Mangelsen's work. The banners hang in trees along the Downtown Mall throughout the month of June.

Rounding out the event will be the TREES exhibit, in which George Steinmetz’s aerial photographs of global landscapes will be projected onto banners in the trees along the city’s downtown pedestrian mall. “The town just lends itself perfectly to a festival like this,” Thode says. “And it’s got the atmosphere of people who really enjoy themselves.”


— Reporting by Feifei Sun. Produced by Vaughn Wallace.

The LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph begins on Thursday, June 9th, and continues through Sunday, June 11th. A complete schedule of events is available at LOOK3.org. The festival has sold out of passes, although a special “Big Love” pass is still available.

D-DAY: JUNE 6, 1944

 

 Men of the 16th Infantry Regiment seek shelter from German machine-gun fire in shallow waterbehind "Czech hedgehog" beach obstacles, Easy Red sector, Omaha Beach.

© Robert Capa/Magnum Photos.

 
The Magnificent Eleven: The D-Day Photographs of Robert Capa

Via Skylighters.org

When soldiers of the 16th Regiment of the 1st Infantry Division landed at Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, photographer Robert Capa, in the employ of LIFE magazine, was among them.

Perhaps the best known of all World War II combat photographers, the Hungarian-born Capa had made a name for himself well before climbing into a landing craft with men of Company E in the early morning hours of D-Day. He risked his life on more than one occasion during the Spanish Civil War and had taken what is considered the most eerily fascinating of all war photographs. The famous image reportedly depicts the death of Spanish Loyalist militiaman Frederico Borrell Garcia as he is struck in the chest by a Nationalist bullet on a barren Iberian hillside.

Capa was known to say, "If your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough." On D-Day, he came close once again. With Capa standing in the very stern, his landing craft mistakenly came ashore at the section of Omaha Beach dubbed "Easy Red." Then the ramp went down.

"The flat bottom of our barge hit the earth of France," Capa remembered in his book Slightly Out of Focus. "The boatswain lowered the steel-covered barge front, and there, between the grotesque designs of steel obstacles sticking out of the water, was a thin line of land covered with smoke — our Europe, the 'Easy Red' beach.

"My beautiful France looked sordid and uninviting, and a German machine gun, spitting bullets around the barge, fully spoiled my return. The men from my barge waded in the water. Waist-deep, with rifles ready to shoot, with the invasion obstacles and the smoking beach in the background gangplank to take my first real picture of the invasion. The boatswain, who was in an understandable hurry to get the hell out of there, mistook my picture-taking attitude for explicable hesitation, and helped me make up my mind with a well-aimed kick in the rear. The water was cold, and the beach still more than a hundred yards away. The bullets tore holes in the water around me, and I made for the nearest steel obstacle. A soldier got there at the same time, and for a few minutes we shared its cover. He took the waterproofing off his rifle and began to shoot without much aiming at the smoke-hidden beach. The sound of his rifle gave him enough courage to move forward, and he left the obstacle to me. It was a foot larger now, and I felt safe enough to take pictures of the other guys hiding just like I was."

Capa was squeezing off photographs as he headed for a disabled American tank. He remembered feeling "a new kind of fear shaking my body from toe to hair, and twisting my face." With great difficulty his trembling hands reloaded his camera. All the while he repeated a sentence that he had picked up during the Spanish Civil War: "Es una cosa muy seria" ("This is a very serious business").

After what seemed an eternity, Capa turned away from the beach killing zone and spotted an incoming LCI (landing craft, infantry). He headed for it. "I did not think and I didn't decide it," he later wrote. "I just stood up and ran toward the boat. I knew that I was running away. I tried to turn but couldn't face the beach and told myself, 'I am just going to dry my hands on that boat.'"

With his cameras held high to keep them from getting waterlogged, Capa was pulled aboard the LCI and was soon out of harm's way. He had used three rolls of film and exposed 106 frames. After reaching England, he sped by train to London and delivered his precious film for developing.

A darkroom technician was almost as anxious to see the invasion images as Capa himself. In his haste, the technician dried the film too quickly. The excess heat melted the emulsion on all but 10 of the frames. Those that remained were blurred, surreal shots, which succinctly conveyed the chaos and confusion of the day.

Capa's D-Day photos have become classics. One of them, depicting a GI struggling through the churning surf of Omaha Beach, has survived as the definitive image of the Normandy invasion. He went on to photograph the Arab-Israeli war in 1948. He also photographed his friends Ernest Hemingway and Pablo Picasso, as well as film star Ingrid Bergman, with whom he reportedly had a love affair.

After that, having cheated death so many times, Capa vowed never to risk his life in wartime photography again. In 1954, however, he agreed to supply LIFE with some photos of the escalating conflict between the French and the Viet Minh in Indochina. That spring, while attempting to get as close to the fighting as possible, he stepped on a land mine and was killed at the age of 40.

Capa's shot of a victorious Yank graced the May 14, 1945 cover of LIFE.

Robert Capa is one of many wartime photographers who have risked their lives and made the ultimate sacrifice to capture the essence of desperate combat on film. Frozen in time and etched in our collective memory, the D-Day photos speak volumes about courage and sacrifice.

John G. Morris, 1998

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"I had rehearsed my part in every detail, from the moment the raw film arrived in London to the transfer of prints and negatives to the courier who would take them to the States — with a stop at the censor's office in between."

– John G. Morris
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"Dennis came bounding up the stairs and into my office, sobbing. 'They're ruined! Ruined! Capa's films are all ruined!'"

– John G. Morris

The Editor: John Morris

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Something woke me early on the morning of Tuesday, June 6, 1944. I drew the blackout curtain and saw that it was just another dull, gray day, colder than an English spring had any right to be. The streets were empty, and I was alone in the flat I shared with Frank Scherschel on Upper Wimpole Street in London's West End. He had departed — vanished, actually, without saying a word — several days earlier for his battle station, a camouflaged airfield from which he would fly reconnaissance over the English Channel to photograph the largest armada ever assembled. My job was to stay behind, to edit those and other photos for LIFE as picture editor of the London bureau.

I dressed as usual in olive drab, turned on the radio, made tea and read the papers, which of course had nothing to report. Then, at 8:32 London time, the bulletin came over the BBC:

"Under command of General Eisenhower, Allied naval forces, supported by strong Allied air forces, began landing Allied armies this morning on the northern coast of France."

"This is it," I whispered to myself, uttering the very words that Joe Liebling of The New Yorker later called "the great cliché of the Second World War." I hurried to the TIME-LIFE office in Soho, even though there wouldn't be much for me to do — for many hours, as it turned out.

I had been waiting eight months for this day. There had been a false alarm on Saturday, when a young telegrapher in the Associated Press London bureau, practicing to get up her speed, had put out an erroneous bulletin:

URGENT PRESS ASSOCIATED NYK FLASH EISENHOWER'S HQ ANNOUNCED ALLIED LANDINGS IN FRANCE

It had been corrected within a minute — "Bust that flash" — but it had sent a wave of panic through both Allied and German headquarters. Now it was for real. Tuesday was a good D-Day for LIFE. Our job was to furnish action pictures for the next issue, dated June 19, which would close on Saturday in New York, and appear the following week. Wirephotos, of poor quality and limited selection, would not do; besides, they would be available to newspapers through the pool. Our only hope to meet the deadline was to send original prints and negatives, as many as possible, in a pouch that would leave Grosvenor Square by motorcycle courier at precisely 9:00 a.m. London time on Thursday. The courier would take it to a twin-engine plane standing by at an airdrome near London. At Prestwick, Scotland, the base for transatlantic flights, the pouch would be transferred to a larger plane. After one or two fuel stops, it would arrive in Washington, D.C., and our pictures would be hand-carried to New York on Saturday.

I had rehearsed my part in every detail, from the moment the raw film arrived in London to the transfer of prints and negatives to the courier who would take them to the States — with a stop at the censor's office in between. Clearing the censors at the Ministry of Information was by now a familiar routine. Their office was on the ground floor of the University of London's tall central building, which backed onto Bedford Square. Available twenty-four hours a day, the censors were cooperative, as censors go, permitting us to sit alongside them as they worked. Our photographers knew to avoid the faces of Allied dead, shoulder patches that revealed unit designations, and "secret" weapons (although by now most were known to the enemy) — so the work was for the most part pro forma. But it was tedious in the extreme, since every single print had to be stamped, after which the censor bundled all the acceptable material into an envelope and sealed it, using a special tape imprinted with the words PASSED FOR PUBLICATION. Without the tape, it could not leave the country.

Getting the packet by car to the courier at Grosvenor Square, about a mile from the ministry, looked simple on the map, but the most direct way, down Oxford Street, was often jammed with double-decker buses, so I devised a parallel route on a series of side streets: Hollen to Noel to Great Marlborough to Hanover to Brook (I can remember every turn five decades later). This put me onto the wrong side of Grosvenor Square, but the final fifty yards could be covered on foot — while running at top speed. I left the little two-door Austin sedan Time Inc. had given me to its own fate. It was not uncommon for joyriders to take it out for a spin when I worked late, but that was no problem. A call to Scotland Yard was all that was necessary. The car would invariably be found as soon as the thief ran out of what little petrol was in the tank.

For the Normandy invasion, there were twelve photographers accredited for the wire services and six for LIFE. (In the photo at left, taken one week before disembarkation in Normandy, are (top) from left to right: Bob Landry, George Rodger, Frank Scherschel, and Bob Capa. Bottom, John Morris (Editor) stands between Ralph Morse and David Scherman.) Only four press photographers were supposed to land with the first wave of American infantry on D-Day itself, and we managed to get two of the spots, for Bob Landry and Robert Capa. Both were veterans — Capa would be on the fifth front of his third major war. Although often unlucky at cards and horses, Capa nevertheless used a gambling metaphor to describe his situation on D-Day in his 1947 memoir-novel, Slightly Out of Focus: "The war correspondent has his stake — his life — in his own hands, and he can put it on this horse or that horse, or he can put it back in his pocket at the very last minute ... I am a gambler. I decided to go in with Company E in the first wave."

Bob Landry also felt obliged to accept this dubious privilege. The other LIFE assignments sorted themselves out. Frank Scherschel stuck with his buddies in the Air Force. David Scherman chose the Navy. George Rodger accompanied the British forces, under General Bernard Montgomery. Ralph Morse's assignment was General George Patton's Third Army, but since it would not hit the beachhead until later, he boarded a landing ship whose job it was to pick up casualties — of which there would be plenty.

Who would get the first picture? Bad weather prevented good general views from either air (Scherschel) or sea (Scherman). Rodger, landing with the British on an undefended beach, "walked ashore in a blaze of anti-climax," as he put it in typically modest understatement. All day Tuesday we waited, and no pictures. It was rumored that one Signal Corps photographer had been killed in the first hours, but it turned out that he had "only" lost a leg. Late on Tuesday night Bert Brandt of Acme Newspictures, having scarcely gotten his feet wet, returned to London with a first picture!, but not a terribly exciting one, of a momentarily unopposed landing on the French coast, shot from the bow of his landing craft. Landry's film — and his shoes — somehow got lost. A disaster. I had been told that AP would have the fourth first-wave spot, but not one of their six photographers landed that day. So it was entirely up to Capa to capture the action, and where was he? Hour after hour went by. We were now waiting in the gloom of Wednesday, June 7, keeping busy by packaging the "background pictures," all of relatively little interest, that now flooded in from official sources. The darkroom staff — all five of them — had been standing by idly since Tuesday morning, their anxiety about the pressure they would be under growing steadily by the hour. This nervousness would soon result in an epic blunder.

At about 6:30 Wednesday evening, the call came in from a Channel port: Capa's film was on the way. "You should get it in an hour or two," a voice crackled over the line before fading into static. I shared this information with pool editor E. K. Butler of AP, a feisty little martinet whose nickname was "Colonel." He snapped back, "All I want is pictures, not promises!" Around nine, a panting messenger arrived with Capa's little package: four rolls of 35-millimeter film plus half a dozen rolls of 120 film (2 1/4 by 2 1/4 inches) that he had taken in England and on the Channel crossing. A scrawled note said that the action was all in the 35-millimeter, that things had been very rough, that he had come back to England unintentionally with wounded being evacuated, and that he was on his way back to Normandy.

Braddy, our lab chief, gave the film to young Dennis Banks to develop. Photographer Hans Wild looked at it wet and called up to me to say that the 35-millimeter, though grainy, looked "fabulous!" I replied, "We need contacts - rush, rush, rush!" Again I phoned Butler through the AP switchboard, but he could only bellow, "When do I get pictures?" Brandt's wirephoto of troops landing apparently unopposed had scarcely satisfied the West's desperate need to believe in the actuality of invasion. A few minutes later Dennis came bounding up the stairs and into my office, sobbing. "They're ruined! Ruined! Capa's films are all ruined!" Incredulous, I rushed down to the darkroom with him, where he explained that he had hung the films, as usual, in the wooden locker that served as a drying cabinet, heated by a coil on the floor. Because of my order to rush, he had closed the doors. Without ventilation the emulsion had melted.

I held up the four rolls, one at a time. Three were hopeless; nothing to see. But on the fourth roll there were eleven frames with distinct images. They were probably representative of the entire 35-millimeter take, but their grainy imperfection — perhaps enhanced by the lab accident — contributed to making them among the most dramatic battlefield photos ever taken. The sequence began as Capa waded through the surf with the infantry, past antitank obstacles that soon became tombstones as men fell left and right. This was it, all right. D-Day would forever be known by these pictures.

One more ordeal lay ahead. We now had only a few hours to get our picture packet through the censors, and in addition to Capa's we had hundreds of other photos, the best from Dave Scherman of matters just before the landing. The British and Canadians had covered invasion preparations for days, as had the U.S. Army Signal Corps and the Navy and Air Force photographers. Nobody really cared now about such pictures, but we dutifully sent them on.

At 3:30 on Thursday morning, pictures in hand — including Capa's precious eleven — I drove my Austin through deserted streets to the Ministry of Information, where I had to wait my turn. Ours was the largest picture shipment of the week, and I almost wished I could throw all but the Capa shots overboard in the interest of time. Finally, about 8:30, the censor finished putting his stamp on all the pictures. I stuffed the big envelope, and then it happened. The censor's specially imprinted tape stuck fast to its roll. It simply would not peel off. We tried another roll. Same result. This went on for minutes that seemed hours, and I had to deliver the packet to the courier, a mile away, by nine o'clock — our only chance to make the deadline after eight months!

I left the ministry at about 8:45 and drove like a maniac through the scattered morning traffic, down the little side streets, reaching the edge of Grosvenor Square at 8:59. I ran the last fifty yards and found the courier, in the basement of the Service of Supply headquarters, about to padlock his sack. "Hold it!" I shouted, and he did.

Just after LIFE's Saturday-night close, the editors cabled,

TODAY WAS ONE OF THE GREAT PICTURE DAYS IN LIFE'S OFFICE, WHEN CAPA'S BEACHLANDING AND OTHER SHOTS ARRIVED.

I could only think of the pictures lost. How was I going to face Capa?

The D-Day landing print will be featured in the forthcoming exhibition: "History's Big Picture" at Monroe Gallery of Photograpjhy July 1 - September 26, 2011.


Related: The Photographic Collection of John G. Morris

The National World War II Museum

JUNE 5 -- 1968

Bill Eppridge: Bobby and Ethel face a jubiliant crowd in the ballroom of ther Ambassador Hotel after his victory in the California Primary, June 5, 1968 ©Time Inc.

Of course, every great photographer has that one picture, an icon, which sometimes even distracts attention from his other work. For Bill Eppridge that's the one taken in the early hours of June 5th, 1968.


After the campaigns of '66 and '68, in a time when there was no Secret Service protection for presidential candidates, when press contingents were small and access available for the asking, he could even call the senator a friend. So too did millions of Americans whose only connection to Robert Kennedy was that they saw in him hope for the future.

I well remember thinking how exciting it was for Bill and reporter Sylvia Wright to be so very close to RFK during that campaign. To me, he was "real" and he was young, and it was the first time I would be old enough to vote. Somehow he would deal with Vietnam and our recovery from Dr. King's assassination. He was the antidote to the spirit of disharmony so many of us felt.

The events in Los Angeles that day and the next are best told by Bill for there's the knowledge and a sensitivity that come with the intimacy of his experience.

At the home office here in New York it had been a fairly typical Tuesday evening. That meant that a respectable number of the Life staff were to be found in a local bar. The magazine closed on a Wednesday and so, while it may have been latish, it was early to go home, and we didn't have to return to work. It was easy to find volunteers to keep the bar open.

Successful at last negotiating my key into my apartment's lock, by now it was really quite late and I tried desperately not to disturb my roommate. But Susan was awake, not because of my antics but because of the horrific news from California. She welcomed me with: "Bobby has just been shot."

 

 Bill Eppridge: Busboy Juan Romero tries to comfort Presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy after assassination attempt, June 5, 1968  ©Time Inc.


I'll never forget the way she screamed at me to get back to the office immediately. Obviously, in 1968, there were no cell phones, and they had frantically been trying to reach the bar-crawling picture department.

Gathered again somberly on the 29th floor, we shed our tears, but went to work quickly and professionally. We spent three days, 'round-the-clock, putting together the regular and a special issue. We had the convenience of office showers in those days and they, and the adrenaline, refreshed us. For the cover, we chose Bill's very serene and touching picture of Bobby running down the beach with his dog, Freckles; the assassination photograph went inside.

Bill's film had been processed in Los Angeles and, despite some pushing, needed further coaxing in our New York lab to produce the single print from which we could engrave. The negatives were handed to me for safekeeping, and I, discreetly, placed them under my large, and badly faded green desk blotter.

I wasn't the most obvious person for the two burly FBI agents to question about the whereabouts of the film when they hesitated at my desk, but my helpful and rather disingenuous "I know that whoever has the negatives will certainly help you gentlemen out by making really big prints for you to study" seemed to move them along. "We will obviously do whatever we can to cooperate, especially at a time like this."

The miniskirt too may have helped them believe in my innocence. But it was a different time: No cell phone, but a desk blotter, and even negatives. There was certainly no Department of Homeland Security. We were anxious to help, but with one negative, possibly the best lab in the country, and no such thing as a digital copy, we weren't taking a chance on losing that negative and its image.

Bobby lingered for almost 26 hours after the shooting, and Bill flew into New York, later meeting the senator's coffin at the airport, attending the service at St. Patrick's Cathedral, and being invited on to the funeral train to Arlington.

Bill and I spent a considerable amount of time together over that couple of days although it's difficult to calculate where those hours came from. My most vivid memory is of a quiet dinner shared, both crying and comforting one another. I was, and remain, in absolute awe of how he had the wits about him to capture so memorably that horrible moment. I asked him directly: "What was going on in your mind? Your dear friend had just been shot. How could you think that quickly under those circumstances?"

He explained – he talked about his reaction to the sound of the .22-caliber shots, and what he instinctively understood when he looked down at the man. There was nothing he could do to save him. There were plenty of other people to tend to him. So, his duty was to his profession, and, struggling to keep his emotions in check, he took one of the most significant photographs of the 20th century.

Many have described the picture as having a Pietà-like quality. Jack Newfield saw something religious too, and something more: "The expression on Robert Kennedy's face seems serene and accepting," he wrote, "his arms spread like Jesus on the Cross. The face of Juan Romero, a 17-year-old busboy who loved Kennedy and served him the night before, is shocked and appalled. Robert Kennedy's mood that last night was serene and liberated. The bullet arrived so swiftly it did not have time to alter the emotions Bob's face was reflecting in the final moments of his conscious life. Each time I see this photo I think it should be called 'History Slipping Through Our Fingers.' That's when history slipped through our fingers, leaving behind a photograph with its tragic traces of promises."

It's those promises that I have missed.

As is often said about the Sixties, they didn't end merely to conform with the calendar. By 1973, Life had ceased publishing as a weekly and Bill, after a short stint at People magazine, moved on to Sports Illustrated. "I wasn't shooting baseball, basketball or football," explains Bill, although of course he did shoot all three. "My motto is sports with no balls."

--Excerpted from "Bill Eppridge: A Personal Reflection on the Photographer in a Tumultuous Time"
June 2008
by Barbara Baker Burrows
via The Digital Journalist


Related: The burned master print of "Robert F. Kennedy Shot"

EXHIBITION REVIEW: COMPOSING THE ARTIST

Steve Schapiro: Truman Capote, Holcomb, Kansas, April,1967

THE Magazine
Santa Fe's Monthly Magazine
June 1, 2011

In the words of the great storyteller Eudora Welty, “a good snapshot stops a moment from runningaway.” Capturing someone on film is a tricky business, particularly when that someone is a famous author or artist. The skill and agility of the photographer is elegantly evidenced in Composing the Artist, an exhibition currently on display at Monroe Gallery. This diverse survey offers an intimate glimpse into some of thepast century’s most iconic art personalities.


Abstract artists who emerged in the middle of the twentieth century introduced not only new ways of making art, but in fact encouraged us to look at the very concept and convention of art with fresh eyes. In Helen Frankenthaler, New York (1969) Frankenthaler is in a deep downward bend, pouring a bucket of paint onto a canvas spread out across the floor. She wears an expression of almost otherworldly serenity on her face—an aspect that stands in sharp contrast to the revolutionary physicality of her actions. This photograph of the incongruously graceful Frankenthaler is placed near an image of Jackson Pollock, who is crouched down in characteristic paint-flinging insouciance with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. Deeply personal portraits like these underscore the intimate and sometimes sensual act involved in the process of a painting’s creation and make us momentarily privy to the very human activity of artistic expression.

Even a cursory familiarity with the creative luminaries of the past century is helpful in appreciating this show. For example, a 1967 shot of Truman Capote—dapperly dressed and jauntily posing outside the Holcomb, Kansas post office—seems playful at first glance; knowing that sleepy Holcomb is the town made infamous by Capote in his crime novel In Cold Blood adds depth and interest to this otherwise lighthearted composition. Fans of Matisse will swoon over Robert Capa’s 1950 portrait of the celebrated abstractionist. The stout eighty-one-year-old painter is holding up a thin, long brush that’s roughly the length of his body and gently applying paint to a large sheet of paper taped to the wall. The image’s caption informs us that Matisse is making sketches for the murals of the Chapelle des Dominicains, in Paris. To hold a brush of this length would be an awkward feat for even the most able-bodied young man. It’s clear, however, that Matisse’s advanced age doesn’t hinder him from his creative endeavors in the slightest. The artist’s calm agility creates a composition of remarkable impact.

Pablo Picasso and Françoise Gilot pictures the couple walking along a beach. A beaming Picasso is holding a parasol above Gilot, his longtime muse and lover, and one recognizes in their carefree smiles the sort of sun-soaked giddiness that comes with spending a romantic day at the beach. The frayed rim of the straw hat worn by the radiantly beautiful Gilot is offset by the fringed tassels on the parasol carried by Picasso, adding further visual intrigue to the happy scene.

A riveting 1958 portrait of Vladimir Nabokov taken by Carl Mydans captures the author leaning out of a car window, looking over his shoulder with his hair mussed and his eyeglasses halfway down his nose. His eyes twinkle with mischief, and his quiet smile is both disinterested and amused. The subject’s disheveled appearance contrasts mysteriously with his cunning countenance, making the simple act of looking at a photograph a strangely private experience. A portrait of Ernest Hemingway on a hunting trip with his son in Sun Valley, Idaho, in 1941, is absolutely stunning. The ten- or eleven-year-old boy is lounging nonchalantly against a bridge, his clean bare feet flexed, and it’s clear that this comfortable pair is taking a break from the day’s activities. The calm, casually postured Hemingway adds a quality of mellow serenity to a scene that is at once unplanned and composed. This quiet look at a moment of relaxation between father and son stops just short of being sentimental, and contains that rare quality that makes photography such a singularly personal and moving art form.

The exhibition standouts are plenty, and Monroe Gallery does a fine job of including a wide range of complex, fascinating characters. Perhaps that clichéd concept of “the good old days” is a largely exaggerated one, but these photographs nevertheless leave one feeling an almost intoxicating nostalgia for a bygone era marked by creative vigor and intellectual ingenuity.

—Iris McLister

The exhibition continues through June 26, 2011

MONROE GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY

112 Don Gaspar
Santa Fe, NM 87501
505.992.0800

http://www.monroegallery.com/

Richard Levy Gallery 20th Anniversary Celebration this Saturday, June 4th, 6:30 - 8:30 pm

 

What I Saw, Photographs by Richard Levy · The Project Room: The Post Card Show · June 4 - July 29, 2011


This Saturday, June 4 from 6:30 - 8:30 pm - the 20th anniversary celebration! To commemorate our 20 years in Albuquerque, we are hosting a benefit auction of photographs from What I Saw, by Richard Levy. Proceeds benefit local arts non-profit 516 ARTS and Seed2Need -a great organization that provides fresh produce to local food pantries. Please join us for this event, celebrate 20 years of Richard Levy Gallery, and give back to our community!

Guests will also be treated to The Postcard Show, which includes hundreds of vintage postcards from Richard Levy's own collection (many of which came from his days on skates at the Silver Sunbeam). The exhibit spans from turn of the century to contemporary, including a large assortment from vintage Albuquerque, linen advertising, photographic, photo-manipulations, chromes, hand painted, airbrushed and countless other gems. Richard Levy began developing one of the most extensive postcard collections in the Southwest in the early 70's as postcard dealer and owner of The Silver Sunbeam. The Postcard Show is an experience that any New Mexico history fan or postcard aficionado won't want to miss!!

Dates: June 4 - July 29, 2011

Reception: Saturday June 4th, 6:30 - 8:30 pm
Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 11:00 - 4:00
Location: 514 Central Avenue SW, Albuquerque
Contact: 505.766.9888, info@levygallery.com

2011 REVIEW SANTA FE JUNE 3 - 5

Set in scenic Northern New Mexico, Review Santa Fe is the premier juried portfolio review event in the world. Designed to facilitate relationships between photographers and industry professionals interested in new work.

Up to 100 photographers are selected to meet with some of today’s most relevant and esteemed curators, editors, publishers, gallerists and others eager to discuss photography and the creative impulse.

The three-day event offers participants nine portfolio reviews, inclusion in the Review Santa Fe 100 Online Listing, Welcome Reception at the NM Museum of Art, Closing Reception, and a Sunday Seminar at the NM Museum of Art. Plus the art and photographic communities host additional events concurrent with Review Santa Fe to make for a vibrant and dynamic weekend.

Portfolio Viewing

Friday, June 3, 5:30-8:00pm - free and open to the public
Hilton Santa Fe Historic Plaza

Please join us on this one special evening to view a broad range of contemporary photography, encompassing social, environmental and political issues, plus exceptional fine-art projects.

The public will have the opportunity to peruse the bodies of work and speak with the artists from all over the world in this unique exposition/exhibition format

Panel Discussion on Photography's Cultural Impact
"Spheres of Influence: Photography and its Cultural Impact"

Sunday, June 5, 10:30-12pm, St. Francis Auditorium, New Mexico Museum of Art

Free and open to the public
Indie Photobook Library

June 3-4, 2011, Hilton Santa Fe Historic Plaza
Free and open to the public
Indie Photobook Library (iPL) is an archive of self-published and indie published photobooks that showcases and preserves them through traveling exhibitions and as a non-circulating public library.


Review Santa Fe is organized by the nonprofit organization, Center, founded in 1994, it supports, promotes and provides opportunity to gifted and committed photographers.