Big Idea: The Power of Imagery and the Civil Rights Experience

 

Via Humanities Kansas Big Idea series.

May 7, 2024

Note: Due to copyright restrictions, the images are accessible by clicking on the corresponding links.

Margaret Bourke-White, World’s Highest Standard of Living (1937)

Great photographs open your eyes to the world around you, raise awareness, and make you feel emotion. They are powerful reminders of our history and allow us to bear witness to our collective past. Perhaps some of the most powerful early images are of activist, orator, and formerly enslaved man Frederick Douglass. (More by Margaret Bourke-White)

Various Artists, Photos of Frederick Douglass.

Douglass escaped slavery in 1838, the same year that Louis Daguerre took the first photograph of a person in Paris. Douglass recognized that photography could be a powerful tool, and he constantly sat for the camera to communicate to the world a serious, intelligent, engaged, good-looking, and dignified man. This made him the most photographed American in the 19th century. Douglass said, “When you look at a photograph of me you will never deny that I am a man worthy of freedom and citizenship. You will look me in the eye and see my humanity.”

Just as Douglass recognized the power of photography as a tool to help put an end to slavery and injustice, photographers during the Civil Rights era turned their cameras toward the fight for equality and human rights. Their business was to tell the truth about the lives of African Americans.

Dr. Ernest C. Withers, Sanitation Workers assemble in front of Clayborn Temple for a solidarity march, Memphis, TN (1968)

These photographers were brave, steadfast, and determined to shed light on our behavior as a nation. They used the power of the still image to expose the atrocities that were occurring in this country on a daily basis.

Their work was tireless and dangerous, done out of duty and honor. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance, and part of that vigilance comes from a visual way of understanding what we are experiencing and what needs to be confronted.

One of the most famous photographers of this era was a Kansan: Gordon Parks was born in Fort Scott in 1912, the youngest of 15 children in a family deeply affected by the racial terror used to enforce Jim Crow segregation. As his memoir of the same title explains, he saw the camera as his “choice of weapons” against all the things he disliked about living in America as a Black man.

Gordon Parks, Doll Test, Harlem, New York, 1947

Parks became the first Black photographer for Life Magazine, giving a voice to the marginalized, downtrodden, and underrepresented. In 1947 he photographed the Doll Test for Ebony magazine. This famous psychological test by Drs. Kenneth and Mamie Clark presented young children with a white doll and a Black doll. They were asked to identify which doll they preferred, which one was good, and which one was bad. Most children chose the white doll. When asked which doll was most like them, some children became upset when they had to identify with the Black doll. The study revealed the psychological damage of segregation and influenced the Supreme Court’s monumental Brown v. Board of Education decision that separate was not equal.

Will Counts, Elizabeth Eckford and Hazel Bryan (or “The Scream Image”), 1957

Will Counts was born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, and took one of the most iconic images of the Civil Rights movement: Elizabeth Eckford trying to enter high school surrounded by a white mob; Hazel Bryan is yelling at her from behind, her face contorted with anger. This image has become a notorious symbol of white hatred and followed both Eckford and Bryan throughout their lives. In 1963 Bryan apologized to Eckford for her behavior. Counts photographed them again in 1997; they struck up an unlikely friendship and spoke at schools about tolerance, but the friendship eventually ended.

Charles Moore, Alabama Fire Department Aims High-Pressure Water Hoses at Civil Rights Demonstrators, Birmingham Protests, May 3, 1963

Photographer Charles Moore was born in Hackleburg, Alabama, in 1931. He credited his parents for giving him strength, faith, and acceptance of all people. He said, “Pictures can absolutely make a difference and have an impact on society, that’s what photojournalism is. They allow white people to see the violence and cruelty that Black Americans must endure.” The protests in Birmingham were a turning point for Civil Rights as Moore captured the violence and brutality that peaceful protesters endured. Moore said that “they seemed to enjoy beating on these people, and had such hatred in their faces as they committed these atrocities and spewed their anger and venom.”

McPherson & Oliver, Escaped slave Gordon, also known as "Whipped Peter," showing his scarred back at a medical examination, Baton Rouge, Louisiana (1863)

Spider Martin, Alabama God-Damn (1965)

In 1965, James “Spider” Martin captured this image from the Selma Voting Rights March. It’s a powerful message and one that calls back to the infamous photograph of the formerly enslaved man named Peter, taken 102 years earlier. Peter (also known as Gordon) endured a harrowing 10-day journey while barefoot and chased by bloodhounds. He found safety among Union soldiers encamped at Baton Rogue; when he was examined by military doctors, they discovered the horrific scars on his back from beatings. The image, which came to be known as “Whipped Peter,” is one of the strongest testaments of the brutality of slavery and helped to fuel the abolitionist movement. Fast forward to 1965; this unidentified man is fed up and defiant. Rev. Martin Luther King once said to Spider Martin, “Spider, we could have marched and protested forever, but if it weren’t for guys like you it would have been for nothing. The whole world saw your pictures, and that’s why the Voting Rights Act passed.”

Bob Gomel, Black Muslim Leader Malcolm X photographing then Cassius Clay, Miami, 1964

Bob Gomel was a photographer for Life Magazine and was known for his iconic images of world leaders and popular culture. He took this image of Malcolm X photographing Cassius Clay in Miami. Gomel said, “The atmosphere was celebratory and jubilant, and it was very easy to be around these men and capture their true essence.” Both men would make sure to carefully craft their public images, assuring they were taken seriously and knowing that controlling the narrative was a source of power for Black people. The site—a diner lunch counter, itself a symbol of resistance—was certainly no accident. Clay would change his name later that same year, abandoning his “slave name” and adopting Muhammad Ali, which filled him with pride and power. Tragically, Malcolm X would be assassinated early the following year.  (See more at the exhibition 1964)

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Devin Allen, Time Magazine covers, 2015 and 2020

Today, a new generation of Civil Rights photographers stand on the shoulders of trailblazers like Douglass and Parks: Devin Allen, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Sheila Pree Wright, Patience Salanga, and Daewoud Bey among many others continue the work of showing us the struggle for equality. We need these important images and voices to make sure the stories are told and not brushed under the rug. Through photos, we feel these incidents and can see a mirror of ourselves. They show us that this is our burden as Americans: that united we stand, but divided we fall.

Ann Dean is an artist and freelance photographer who teaches photography at the Lawrence Arts Center.

In the news: the unexploded bombs dropped on Laos during the Vietnam War

Stephen Wilkes: Bomb Craters, Laos, 2015

Stephen Wilkes' photographs in National Geographic: Laos Finds New Life After the Bombs

Slideshow

During a visit to Laos in 2012, LIFE photographer Bob Gomel's tour guide showed him how the Laotians hid from the American bombs during the war-in underground caves:

Bob Gomel shares never-before-seen pictures of The Beatles

Houston photographer shares never-before-seen pictures of The Beatles

Via KHOU

 

 
Bob Gomel: The Beatles, Miami, 1964

 

 

All of The Beatle's photographs by Bob Gomel are available as fine art prints from Monroe Gallery of Photography.

Cassius Clay couldn’t sleep in Miami Beach after beating Sonny Liston there in the legendary 1964 bout

Until recently, Bob Gomel remembered his photograph of Malcolm X and Cassius and Cassius  Clay as " It was February 26, 1964 in a Miami restaurant after Clay won the heavyweight championship from Sonny Liston. Howard Bingham, Ali's personal photographer is seen at the far right above Ali. Clay's brother Rahaman is seated to Cassius's left (only a fist is visible in the famous frame.) The name and exact location of the restaurant are paled into insignificance.” But now the location has been identified.

Via Miami Herald
May 8, 2015


When the rescue of Hampton House began six years ago, vagrants and drug addicts slept in the motel where Malcolm X once stayed. A tree grew out of the swimming pool where Martin Luther King Jr. swam. The walls were crumbling around the courtyard where Ebony magazine had photographed Muhammad Ali and his new wife and baby.

Amid the ruin, there was no hint of Hampton House’s heyday in the 1960s as the premier getaway for black Americans visiting segregated Miami, where beachfront icons like the Fontainebleau were off limits even to celebrities of color.

On Friday, the decay of Hampton House officially lifted as local leaders celebrated a $6 million rehab of the historic 1953 motel — a largely county-funded effort that’s been in the works for about 15 years.

“We got it done,” Miami-Dade Commissioner Audrey Edmonson told a crowd gathered for the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the motel at the corner of Northwest 27th Avenue and 42nd Street.

Facing demolition in 2000, the Hampton House is being relaunched as a community hub, with a museum, space for a restaurant and motel rooms being converted into office space for community groups, recording studios and rehearsal space for musicians.

Organizers hope to revive the Hampton House’s legacy of live entertainment, too. Its jazz club once drew evening crowds from throughout Miami, making Hampton a night-life hub for local African Americans. Traveling celebrities gave it star power.

Segregation meant Miami’s famous crop of luxury oceanfront hotels weren’t available for black people, so Cassius Clay couldn’t sleep in Miami Beach after beating Sonny Liston there in the legendary 1964 bout. The boxer went back to the Hampton House for a bowl of ice cream, and to celebrate with Malcolm X. A month later, Clay changed his name to Muhammad Ali.

“This was an oasis in a sea of racism,” Khalilah Camacho Ali said from the Hampton House’s new event space, an open-ceiling hall created out of the old jazz club and some motel rooms above.
On the wall hangs a photo of her leaning over Muhammad Ali as he cradles their infant daughter on a Hampton House pool chair. Ebony took the photo, and included it in a 1969 cover spread featuring the couple.

King stayed at the Hampton House often enough that one ground-floor room came to be known as his suite. A photographer snapped King in swim trunks from the pool. And he is said to have delivered an early version of his “I Have a Dream” speech during an event at Hampton House before it made history on the National Mall in 1963.

Historic Hampton House Motel reopens in Miami

The historic Hampton House Motel in Miami reopened Friday, May 8, 2015, with a ceremony to mark the occasion. The motel was frequented by black celebrities and civil rights activists such as Cassius Clay, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. in the middle part of the last century.

A white Jewish couple presided over the Hampton House’s golden years. Harry and Florence Markowitz owned land and apartment buildings in Miami’s Brownsville neighborhood, including what would later become the Hampton House location. In 1954, they leased the land to the Booker Terrace Motel and Apartments.
 

That venture floundered, and the Markowitzes decided to make it a more upscale destination and renamed it the Hampton House after a neigborhood naming contest. They brought in the jazz club to the 50-room motel, started a popular restaurant with late-night fare, and began pursuing black conventions and church groups to boost business. Baseball great Jackie Robinson used Hampton House for a golf tournament he held each year in the Miami area, and the two-story motel marketed itself as the “Social Center of the South.”

The motel closed in the 1970s, and the Markowitzes sold it before the building slipped into disrepair through the 1980s and ’90s. Sons Bob, 74, and Jerry, 66, attended Friday’s ceremony. Bob was asked how his parents would have reacted to seeing Hampton House restored. “I’m getting choked up to even say it,” he replied. “They would be overwhelmed.”

Integration is mostly blamed for the motel’s decline: With black residents and visitors able to frequent beach hotels, the Hampton House lost its edge.



Hampton House had thrived as a gathering spot for local African Americans in the 1960s. At the time, Overtown was fading as the heart of black Miami’s middle class, with more families moving into the new Liberty Square housing complex that sits about 35 blocks from Hampton House.

 

Edmonson, the county commissioner whose district includes the motel, recalls her mother and friends gathering at Hampton House for their regular tea parties. A young Edmonson was occasionally called on for the afternoon’s entertainment, and she was too nervous to look at anyone but her mother while reciting the poem Trees before the ladies decked out in white gloves.

“I remember the Hampton House,” Edmonson told Friday’s crowd assembled on folding chairs in the motel’s parking lot. “I am so proud to say I grew up in this community.”

The Hampton House’s neighborhood in Brownsville now includes some of the poorest stretches of Miami. Miami-Dade wants to raze and rebuild the Liberty Square complex in an effort to root out crime there and revitalize the neighborhood. Census figures from 2010 show Brownsville’s population growing for the first time in 40 years. About 15,000 people live there.

Hampton House organizers hope there will be enough interest in the area that they can generate revenue by renting out the old coffee shop as a restaurant. It’s been restored with a new version of the original mural from somewhere in the Caribbean, and yellow-vinyl stools along the lunch counter. It was the site of perhaps the most famous photo ever taken at Hampton House: Malcolm X, having gotten himself behind the counter, snapping his own photo of Clay after his victory against Liston.

For Enid Pinkney, founding president of the Historic Hampton House Community Trust and long-time champion of the restoration effort, the building’s return offers another chance to link prosperity with Hampton House.

“We’ll have a place in Miami,” she said in a trust video released last year, “where we can go and be proud of the effort that went into bringing that back as an economic engine in the community.”

This article was updated to correct the distance between the Liberty Square housing complex and Hampton House.

 

On Friday, March 6, 1964, Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali

© Bob Gomel

“Black MuslimLeader Malcolm X Photographing Cassius Clay Surrounded by Fans After He BeatSonny Liston for the Heavy Weight Championship, Miami, February, 1964”

 

Day later, bolstered by his mentor Malcom X, Clay stepped in front of a room of journalists to declare his conversion to the Nation of Islam. After fielding hostile questions, he voiced the words that would become his lifelong anthem and would forever change the world of sports: “I don’t have to be what you want me to be.”

Recently, Bob recalled: It was February 26, 1964 in a Miami restaurant after Clay won the heavyweight championship from Sonny Liston. Howard Bingham, Ali's personal photographer is seen at the far right above Ali.  Clay's brother Rahaman is seated to Cassius's left (only a fist is visible in the famous frame.) The name and exact location of the restaurant are paled into insignificance.”

Related: Ali vs. Liston in Miami Beach: The Night ‘the Greatest’ Was Born

              YouTube: March 6, 1964: Cassius Clay becomes Muhammad Ali

Bob Gomel got closer than he wanted to JFK’s funeral

Bob Gomel   Courtesy: Erin Powers / Powers MediaWorks

Via The Houston Chronicle
Posted on November 14, 2013 | By Craig Hlavaty


As a Life magazine photographer in the ’60s, Bob Gomel saw some of the most pivotal moments in pop culture history through the lens of his Nikon.

A hallway in his Memorial home is lined with crisp, perfectly matted and framed shots that he snapped of Muhammad Ali, Marilyn Monroe, The Beatles, Richard Nixon, and Dustin Hoffman. Each photo comes with a rich story from Gomel that leaves the listener with a perma-grin.
But it is Gomel’s most celebrated subject, President John F. Kennedy, that has brought him the most notoriety — and the most sadness. Capturing the funeral of a man he had grown personally close to was not in his plan.

This fall he’s been a busy man, recounting a week of his life 50 years ago, a week that he wishes he wouldn’t have played such a small, but every important role in.

Gomel was on a team of Life photographers tasked with capturing every step of Kennedy’s funeral in November 1963. Gomel was all of 30 years old, thrust into an American nightmare, and assigned to document it all for folks at home. The somber proceedings threw a dark shroud over the country, but Gomel had to keep snapping photos. The fact that the slain president actually knew his name after years of Life coverage made the situation all the more harder for Gomel, who had been orbiting around Kennedy since before he was even elected president.

There was an afternoon late in 1960 when then President-elect Kennedy, Gomel, and another photog spent a few rather normal hours together that he’ll always remember with great pride.

“Kennedy was working and living in a brownstone in Georgetown picking out his cabinet for his first term,” says Gomel, who was waiting to capture the first shots of newly appointed cabinet members. It was slow going some days. Men in suits would come in and out, with little or no word to the press.
“There was just two of us left outside on a cold, dreary Saturday afternoon, so Kennedy invited us inside to watch the Army-Navy football game,” he says. That other man was noted Washington news photog James Atherton, no slouch in his own right. Atherton passed away in 2011.

They went inside and TV trays were brought out. Kennedy, Gomel, Atherton, and some Kennedy staffers ate steak and baked potatoes and watched the game.

“The next thing I remember is Jim waking me up, telling me that Navy won and that I fell asleep on the president,” Gomel says. From then on Kennedy would always have fun with him about it.
Gomel’s photographic journey began at 11 years old, when he delivered groceries on his bicycle for one hot summer in the Bronx, making just enough cash for a Circoflex camera. It cost him $88 — not a small chunk of change in 1944 — but what he wanted more than anything was a camera of his own that didn’t belong to his parents. He wanted to explore the world with a lens, even if it was just the Bronx.

After graduating from New York University, a hitch as a Navy pilot during the tail-end of the Korean War only made him yearn for a life behind the lens even more.

Gomel left Life at the end of 1969 and opened up his own studio in Manhattan. He did commercial work for the likes of Audi, Shell, Pan Am, Volkswagen, and Merrill Lynch before heading to Houston in the late ’70s to to take part in the oil boom.

Now 80 years old, the Manhattan-born, Bronx-raised and proud Houstonian of nearly 40 years hasn’t slowed down a bit, and neither has his trigger finger. When I spoke with him on a sunny afternoon this week, he was giddily telling me about one of his upcoming, month-long photography trips to South India.

“Houston was so exciting at that time, there was so much going on,” he says. “You could work 8 days a week here.”

The hubbub surrounding the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Kennedy means that there are new documentaries, news packages, and online and print stories to resurrect old feelings. Men like Gomel that were on the front lines of history aren’t so cynical about the situation.

“What’s troubling me is the cockamamie work of people trying to capitalize on the anniversary with their assassination theories,” says Gomel. “I have to concur with a preponderance of analysts that Oswald acted alone.”

He was in New York when he found out about the assassination in Dallas. He showed up to work at the Life offices to find that everyone who was on staff was ordered to leave immediately for Washington.

“There was no time to even pack a toothbrush,” he says.

He got into Washington, D.C., on the morning of Nov. 23, just in time to arrive at the White House to see the president’s body being brought back home. From then on, Gomel was shooting everything in front of him.

The mood that week still makes him shudder. The stun in everyone’s eyes, the disbelief and shock was surreal.

“We hadn’t experienced anything like that in our lifetime; it was a series of shocks. It was more than we could comprehend at one time,” he says.

Couriers picked up film every hour to fly it back to New York to get it developed. Sleep was a rarity.
Gomel’s shot of Kennedy’s casket lying in state in the U.S. Capitol rotunda as thousands upon thousands filed in to pay their respects is haunting in its simplicity and scope. The blue hue came from some intervention from the man upstairs, he says. He had been down on the main floor but decided to explore the potential of the balcony above. He found a door that had access and he went up there.

“It was just the right time of day to capture a little bit of light coming through.”

He would shoot from nearly the same vantage point for President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s funeral in March 1969, but from much higher in the rotunda.

The graveside services for Kennedy at Arlington National Cemetery on Nov. 25 featured dozens of heads of state from around the world. There was Charles de Gaulle, Haile Selassie I, Chancellor Ludwig Wilhelm Erhard, and Gomel, somehow right in the mix. He wasn’t exactly supposed to be that close to the world’s leaders.

“I learned only recently at a Life magazine reunion that we didn’t even have credentials for Arlington National Cemetery,” he laughs.

The Life staff had rented a limousine for the funeral and were accidentally put into the official motorcade with all the heads of state.

“I had a front row seat,” Gomel says. His photo, with de Gaulle solemnly saluting the casket of Kennedy and the others looking on in reverence, shows just how packed Kennedy’s service was. He estimates there are 60-plus dignitaries in the photo. Somewhere there is a list of everyone shown.
Getting the best shots sometimes had to come by hook or by crook, on boss’s orders.

“We had to find a way to get pictures. We had an admonition from our editor to not come back with just excuses,” he says.

During the viewing and funeral, Gomel found himself putting aside his personal relationship with Kennedy for work. He was 100 percent concerned with reporting it and capturing all the details with his camera.

“I had to disconnect from my association with the president and the fact he knew my name,” he says.
Gomel was in Houston with the president when he made his famous Moon Race speech at Rice University in September 1962. You can spy the photog in the background of a picture of Kennedy here in town, too.

“We choose to go to the moon,” Kennedy said that day. “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

“I can remember it clearly today,” said Gomel. “He has his fist clenched on the podium, and his delivery was so dynamic. He made all of us believe this was possible and achievable.”

Gomel captured a candid shot of Kennedy climbing out of a space capsule at NASA, which he’s extremely proud of. It’s in his home gallery, and one of the first photos you see when you come into his house. It’s symbolic of the country finally making it to the moon, just as Kennedy wanted.
After the 50th anniversary specials and tributes die down after Nov. 22, Gomel will continue to reflect on what he was a part of all those years ago.

“I wish I didn’t have to have that experience. I have gotten a small degree of fame from it, but I wish it came from another source.”



Bob Gomel's photographs are featured in the forthcoming exhibition "The Life Photographers", November 29 - January 24, 2014, Monroe Gallery of Photography (Santa Fe). During the opening reception on Nov. 29, Richard B. Stolley will be signing copies of the new LIFE book "The Day Kennedy Died, 5 - 7 PM.

With war photography in the news, wrote Bob Gomel of Life magazine, how about some recognition for Max Desfor of The Associated Press?

Max Desfor  ©Photo Bob Gomel

Via The New York Times Lens Blog
October 28, 2013


It was one celebrated photographer’s salute to another. With war photography in the news, wrote Bob Gomel of Life magazine, how about some recognition for Max Desfor of The Associated Press?

“Max was a great inspiration and mentor,” said Mr. Gomel, 80, of Houston. “He was a sweetheart, a gentle soul.”

Mr. Desfor had won the 1951 Pulitzer Prize for photography with his Korean War pictures, particularly the haunting shot of a bombed bridge crawling with refugees (Slide 1).

In 1958, he had offered Mr. Gomel a coveted job with The A.P’s Wide World Division. Mr. Gomel had turned it down for a career in feature photography. Whereupon Mr. Gomel became perhaps best known for his 1969 Life cover, shot from high above, of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s coffin ringed with mourners in the Capitol rotunda. He also photographed the Kennedys, the Beatles, Malcolm X, Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali), Mickey Mantle and Marilyn Monroe.

“Max is 98,” Mr. Gomel said, and was living in a retirement community in Silver Spring, Md. Full article with slideshow here.

Bob Gomel's 80th Birthday Photo Montage

 

A video that took 80 years to make. The LIFE and times of my father, Photographer BOB GOMEL. If he is not in the photo, he took the photo.

My dad was born (1933) and raised in New York City. After serving in the Navy, he began working for LIFE in 1959, producing many memorable images. When LIFE ceased being a weekly in the early 1970s, he began taking photographs for other major magazines. Also in the 1970s, he branched out into advertising photography.
--Cory Gomel

Related:

'One Night In Miami', More Than Clay Beats Liston

Acclaimed LIFE photographer Bob Gomel looks back

BOB GOMEL: LIFE IN THE 1960'S

Unpublished JFK Photos: Houston Remembers President Kennedy's 1962        "Moon Speech" At Rice Stadium

Bob Gomel: “Photography is all about having something to say before you pick the camera up to your eye and push the button”

Its a great weekend of photography in Washington, DC and Santa Fe, NM!

The DC Fine Art Photography Fair continues today, 12 - 7, and Sunday, 12 - 5.

Bob Gomel will be in the gallery in Santa Fe following last night's gala opening reception for

 the exhibit "Bob Gomel: Life in the 1960s"

Winds have cancelled today's festivities at the Albuquerque Balloon Festival, so its a great day to come meet this legendary Life magazine photographer.

Washington, DC - Santa Fe, NM

Photo by Bob Gomel

 

 

Visit Monroe Gallery of Photography this Columbus Day weekend at the inaugural DC Fine Art Photography Fair - or meet renowned LIFE magazine photographer Bob Gomel at the opening reception for his exhibition "Bob Gomel: Life in the 1960s"

Unpublished JFK Photos: Houston Remembers President Kennedy's 1962 "Moon Speech" At Rice Stadium

Via KUHF

Today is the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's famous speech in which he declared, "We choose to go to the moon ..." He delivered it here in Houston, vowing to put Americans on the moon within the decade.

Listen:

I'm sitting here in the bleachers at Rice, on the stadium's east side, where most of the 40,000 people had gathered to hear Kennedy speak. It was Sept. 12, 1962 and reportedly it was quite hot but clear that day. The crowd included not only the mayor of Houston, the county judge, and the president of Rice, but also the Texas governor and various Texas congressman.

"It was blazingly hot. And poor Lyndon Johnson was drenched with perspiration."

Bob Gomel was photographing Kennedy that day for LIFE magazine. He says the president, unbelievably, didn't seem sweaty at all.

"He was cool, man. He just didn't, he just somehow or other, was oblivious to it. He looked perfectly fine."

Houston was the third stop on a presidential tour of aerospace facilities.

Gomel had gone with him to the rocket facility in Huntsville, Alabama and to Cape Canaveral.
At Rice he was so busy taking photos that he didn't realize the importance of the speech until later.

"It was very daring, it was very daring. I mean the Russians were out there in space. And he elected to put us in competition."

Excerpt from speech:
"But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard …"

 

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  President JFK and LIFE magazine photographer Bob Gomel

  LIFE magazine photographer Bob Gomel, 28, at right in background holding camera, as the president enters the stadium before the famous speech. Photo credit: Unknown.
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  Unpublished Photo by Bob Gomel

  At Houston's Manned Spacecraft Center on 6040 Telephone Road, President Kennedy pokes his head out of a spacecraft in this previously unpublished photo. Photo credit: Bob Gomel.
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  President at the Podium

  At Rice University, the presidential speech that ignited the dream. Photo by: Bob Gomel
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  "We choose to go to the moon ..."

  "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard ..." Photo by: Bob Gomel
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  Space Industry Tour

  President John F. Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon Johnson began their space industry tour on Sept. 11, 1962 at rocket-production facilities in Huntsville, Alabama. Photo credit: Bob Gomel.
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  President JFK and VP Lyndon Johnson

  President Kennedy, with Vice President Johnson by his side, speaks at Cape Canaveral during his 1962 tour of U.S. aerospace facilities. Photo credit: Bob Gomel.
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  President Kennedy at Cape Canaveral

  President Kennedy at Cape Canaveral. Photo credit: Bob Gomel.
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  President Kennedy walking into Rice Stadium

  President Kennedy walking into Rice stadium. Photo by: Bob Gomel
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  President at the Podium

  At Rice University, the presidential speech continues. Photo by: Bob Gomel
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  President with Clenched Fist

  President Kennedy with clenched fist during speech. Photo by: Bob Gomel
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  President during Convocation

  President Kennedy during Rice University's Convocation. Photo byBob Gomel

  

Rice presidential historian Douglas Brinkley says this was not only the most important event in Rice's 100-year history, but it was also one of Kennedy's best and most successful speeches, in which he sold the American public on a vast public works project, that despite its expense, united the country.

"It was a way to get Congress to appropriate hundreds of billions of dollars into the space program. This was the single largest public discovery project ever. In scope, it dwarfed the Panama Canal. Maybe only the interstate highway system of Eisenhower is comparable."

Brinkley says Kennedy wisely sold the project as more than just a Cold War space race with the Soviets.

"Kennedy framed it as the march of human civilization into the galaxies. And framed it in that language of breaking the shackles of earth."

Brinkley notes that this was the last time a U.S. President managed to unite the country around a vast, expensive, and noble goal.

The tragedy of the Vietnam war, followed by Ronald Reagan's call to shrink government, made Americans more skeptical about public spending, especially on infrastructure and exploration.

"We aren't seeming to do public discovery anymore. It's all become private sector. And you don't have the government leading the charge on one big grand possibility like Kennedy threw out in front of the 40,000 people at Rice Stadium."



Bob Gomel: LIFE in The 1960s will be on exhibit October 5 - November 18, 2012 at Monroe Gallery of Photography. Bob Gomel will be in attendance at a reception in his honor on Friday, Oct 5, 5 - 7 PM.


Related: 50 years ago, Kennedy reached for stars in historic Rice address

50 years ago a promise made, a promise kept: going to the moon

Kennedy’s speech a ‘tonic’ for nation losing to Russia

The World Through the Lens of Bob Gomel: Spotlight Nepal

Thursday, August 23
6:30 to 8:00 p.m.115 Hyde Park Blvd.
Houston, Texas 77006


Photojournalist Bob Gomel will share photographs of his international travels including Argentina, Brazil, Cambodia, Chile, India, Israel, Laos, Nepal, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Tibet, and Vietnam. A collection of Gomel’s images, taken over a decade working with LIFE Magazine, will be exhibited as well. He will also offer valuable tips on taking great photographs.


Bob Gomel earned a journalism degree from New York University in 1955 and then served as a U.S. Navy aviator. In 1959 he joined the immensely popular magazine LIFE. He later shot national advertising campaigns for Audi, Bulova, GTE, Merrill Lynch, and Shell Oil, among others.

This program is for Supporting, Donor, Patron, Council Cabinet and Young Professional Members.

Online Registration

To begin the registration process please select one of the following fees.

Description	Amount
Supporting/Donor/Cabinet Members Coming to Monroe Gallery of Photography: "Bob Gomel: LIFE in the 1960's" October 5 - November 18. Bob Gomel will be in atendance for the opening reception Friday, Oct. 5, 5 - 7 PM.	$10.00	Register fee ends 8/23/2012

Bob Gomel: “Photography is all about having something to say before you pick the camera up to your eye and push the button”

Malcolm X photographs Cassius Clay on February 25, 1964, the night the boxer knocked out Sonny Liston to become heavyweight champion. The next day Clay revealed that he was a member of the Nation of Islam.


Via New York University Alumni Magazine

Former Life photographer Bob Gomel reflects on the many American stories told with his camera

by Andrea Crawford

A brash 22-year-old dancing around the ring, his gloved fists raised in victory as he proclaims himself “the king of the world”: This may be the most famous image of Muhammad Ali when he was still Cassius Clay—and had just defeated heavyweight champion Sonny Liston in one of boxing’s most stunning upsets. Bob Gomel was there shooting photos for Life magazine, having journeyed to Miami Beach in February 1964 to shadow Clay in the days leading up to the bout. But it was an image Gomel (STERN ’55) captured during the afterparty—of Malcolm X snapping a photo of the new world champion—that the Library of Congress deemed worthy of acquiring last year. From behind the bar, the former Nation of Islam spokesperson smiles broadly as he holds the camera to his face. The seated Clay wears a tuxedo and bow tie, his hands resting in loose fists on the counter. He appears to mug for the camera.

It’s a moment of connection between friends, revealing a playful side of two powerful men whose public personas were often serious, angry, or in Clay’s case, downright crazy. The photograph also bares a secret between them: The boxer had been persuaded by promoters not to announce his conversion to Islam before the fight. The following day, he would make the announcement to the world.

Getting behind the scenes and using photographs to tell a story was what Life did best, and it was what attracted Gomel to the picture magazines. As a young man, he turned down other journalism jobs and went without work for nearly a year waiting to break in. When the chance came, Gomel made the most of it. From 1959 to 1969—the magazine’s last decade as the country’s premier newsweekly—he photographed a long, impressive list of world leaders (John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Nikita Khrushchev, Patrice Lumumba, David Ben-Gurion, Jawaharlal Nehru), actors (Marilyn Monroe, Warren Beatty, Joan Crawford), athletes (Arthur Ashe, Willie Mays, Sandy Koufax, Arnold Palmer, Joe Namath), and other personalities of the era (Jane Jacobs, Robert Moses, Benjamin Spock). When President-elect Kennedy took a walk with 3-year-old Caroline on the day her brother, John Jr., was born; when Martin Luther King Jr. gave his speech at the March on Washington; when the Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show; Gomel captured it all on film.

top: Perhaps Gomel’s most famous photograph was this bird’s-eye image of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s casket lying in state at the Capitol Rotunda in 1969. Gomel rigged strobe lights around the 200-foot dome, strung a wire with a pulley to place the camera in the middle, and ran a zip cord—to trigger the camera—to where he would be standing with the rest of the press. The resulting photograph appeared on the cover of Life magazine. above left: This image of President John F. Kennedy inspecting the space capsule in 1962 remains one of Gomel’s favorites. “It’s John Kennedy, but it’s not the way we anticipate seeing him,” Gomel says. “It’s just one of those off-guard moments that nobody focuses on.” above right: Marilyn Monroe attends a party for Broadway’s The Sound of Music in 1961, one year before her death.

Like any enduring image, says Ben Breard, who featured many of Gomel’s works in an exhibition earlier this year at Afterimage Gallery in Dallas, the photographs are important not only because of their historical and cultural significance. “Of course, there’s an element of being at the right place at the right time to capture the moment, but then you’ve got to do it artistically,” Breard says. The images reveal the photographer’s sense of humor and humanity. “There’s a positive feel to his work,” Breard adds. “It’s uplifting. Even though those were hard times the country went through, [there’s] a hopeful aspect to everything.”

Born in Manhattan and raised in the Bronx, Gomel discovered photography as a boy, struck by an image taken by his teacher hanging in his classroom at the Ethical Culture School on Central Park West. It was a black-and-white picture of a manhole cover on a cobblestone street with some pigeons around it. “I sat next to that picture, and I was just entranced by it,” he says. Gomel joined the teacher’s photography club and began learning on a borrowed camera. When World War II ended, he got a job delivering groceries by bicycle to buy his first camera and soon convinced his parents—his father was an optometrist; his mother, an NYU graduate, was a teacher—to let him appropriate a closet for his darkroom.

 

 

top: John Lennon cannonballs into a pool in 1964 as his fellow Beatles Paul McCartney (center) and Ringo Starr brace for the inevitable splash. the band was in miami for their second live performance on the ed sullivan show—which was watched by 70 million americans.above Left: Famed pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock—best-selling author of the common sense book of baby and child care—is entertained by two young patients during an examination in September 1962.above right: After filming concluded, but before the release of The Graduate, Gomel spent a day with Dustin Hoffman—hanging out with his girlfriend, posing for a sculptor, and, as seen here, picking up his unemployment check.

 

When Gomel arrived at his mother’s alma mater in 1950, he began working for student publications, covering basketball games, which NYU then played at Madison Square Garden. There, he befriended “the fellows who worked the night shift” for the Daily Mirror, the Daily News, the Associated Press, and UPI (then called ACME Newspictures), and he started tagging along on their assignments. After graduating from NYU and serving four years in the U.S. Navy, he was promptly offered a job at the Associated Press. But by then, he had changed his mind about what he wanted to do. “I just felt one picture wasn’t sufficient to tell a story,” he explains. “I was interested in exploring something in depth. And, of course, the mecca was Life magazine.” He turned down the offer from AP.

At Life he was able to shoot the stories that appealed to him, and the recent exhibition included some of his favorites. For one photo-essay, he documented what happens to the family dog when the children return to school, highlighting one forlorn basset hound, in particular. For another series, he arranged for humorist Art Buchwald to go back to Marine boot camp incognito for a week, to relive his days as a recruit. The humor and power of these images endure, even for those too young to know Art Buchwald.

Gomel, who later worked in advertising shooting national campaigns for clients such as Volkswagen, Pan Am, Merrill Lynch, and Shell Oil, also tested technological and creative boundaries at Life. His image of the Manhattan skyline during a blackout in November 1965 is striking, with a full moon illuminating the dark sky. But from his vantage point on the Brooklyn waterfront that night, the moon was behind him. “It occurred to me that the only way we’re all getting along this evening is because we have a full moon,” he says. “I wanted to tell that…in a single picture.” So he rewound his film, changed lenses, turned around and clicked, placing the glowing orb just where he wanted it to be in the dark quadrant of the frame. After a long debate, Gomel says, the editors decided to run it—the first double-exposure Life used in a news story.

Gomel believes photographers have the responsibility to be truthful reporters but also must be clear about what story they’re trying to tell. “Photography is all about having something to say before you pick the camera up to your eye and push the button,” he says. “Are you happy about something, displeased about something? And if so, how are you going to express that on a piece of film?”

More of Bob Gomel's photographs here.