Important Slices of Time

 

Via Joe McNally's Blog

April 26, 2021

In the spring of ’95, I was a staff photographer at LIFE magazine, and was assigned to photograph the subjects of four famous, Pulitizer Prize winning photos, all taken some twenty five years or so previous. One of them, Mary Ann Vecchio, as a teenage runaway, was photographed by John Filo, leaning over the body of a dead student at Kent State University, on May 4th, 1970. The Washington Post Magazine recently took a look at Mary Ann’s life. It’s a beautifully written, reflective piece by Patricia McCormick.

Slices of time is an oft used expression in the realms of still photography. It refers, I think, to the essential conundrum of what we do. Life flows, time moves. In equivalently relentless fashion. And we face off against these ever sluicing torrents with a “still” camera in our hands. A machine designed to stop time. Could any challenge be more quixotic, on the face of it? The digitally driven world around us accelerates, and we’re out there shouting, “Hey, wait a minute!”

But, just as time surely, inexorably advances, we continually succeed in our improbable mission. Moving pictures are wonderful and video is all the rage, but for me, my sense of history, of place, of time and life lived, is utterly fixed in still images. Would I remember the Kent State shootings, on that day, as well as I do, if John Filo had not been there, and had the guts and instincts to put his camera to his eye?

No need to show the photo. We all could draw it in our heads. Then 14-year-old Mary Ann Vecchio kneels over the body of Jeffrey Miller, fatally shot, her face a mask of anguished pain.

When you’re the subject of a Pulitzer Prize winning photo, as Mary Ann was on that day, your life is no longer a private life. You become a part of history, referred to and much discussed. There was sympathy for Mary Ann, a teenage runaway, but also vitriol and accusations, such as the governor of Florida, where she hailed from, labeling her a “dissident communist.” The students were blamed for their own deaths. John Filo was followed by the FBI. Anyone now, in the year 2021, hearing echoes of behavior such as this?

Reading the article in the Post, it was a relief to know Mary Ann is still the person I met years ago in Las Vegas. And indeed the same person even now, quietly living in Florida, going to older neighbors, making visits and delivering meals. Still helping. Others ran away that day. She ran to the body of Mr. Miller, seeking to help. But that decision began an odyssey, one not of her choice. As she says in the article, “That picture hijacked my life.”

I chose to photograph Mary Ann in a peaceful setting, outside of Vegas, where she was living at the time. Vulnerable, wounded, but still possessed of a lovely and giving heart. She and John, the author of the photo, have met. John, who’s an incredibly decent guy, and works now in NY, also has felt the weight of the photo for all these years. So much emotion, history, and pain in a split second.

I made pictures of four people who were prominently featured in momentous Pulitzer pictures on that assignment for LIFE. The other three are below.

Kim Phuc…

Ted Landsmark….The Boston lawyer who was speared with the American flag by a racist mob, in a famous photo made by Stanley Forman of The Boston Globe, known widely as The Soiling of Old Glory. He’s now a professor.

And Ed Wheatley, who along with fellow students, occupied Cornell’s student union for 36 hours, protesting racist practices and a cross burning on the Cornell campus. After an attempt to dislodge them, the protesters armed themselves. Ed led the group out of the building, carrying a rifle, and became, in an instant, part of the history of the tumultuous 60’s. He’s gone on to a life of community activism, fighting for equality in housing. When I met him he was active in projects to reclaim abandoned and rundown properties. Hence the setting.

I’m guessing, but I imagine the collective shutter speeds on all four of the Pulitzers under discussion most likely amount to less than one second in time.

But, because photographers put their camera to their eye, that second won’t pass….ever.

More tk….

View Joe McNally's print collection here.

AIPAD

Via La Lettre de la Photographie

For its 32nd edition, the annual trade fair organized by the Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD) follows the evolution of photography and its market. From March 29 through April 2 in New York, the market bubble of the past few years will inevitably remain. Whether it be rare 19th century prints, photography’s most glorious pictures, icons of pop culture from the middle of the past century or the contemporary work from the 1980’s that provoked the boom, its popularity too.

But don’t be mistaken: acquiring an image signed by Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans or Diane Arbus, even their most renowned, will always cost much less than a picture by Cindy Sherman or Andreas Gursky. Sometimes even 5 times less.

Regrouping some of the most prestigious galleries, AIPAD exposes nearly all of the world’s artists. Beyond the masters, from Steichen to Weston, including Talbot or Levitt, one can find more contemporary talents including Linda Mc Cartney, Alex Prager, Jeff Wall or Nan Goldin. Impossible to ignore another evolution, that of the portrait, a photographic medium omnipresent in contemporary Western visual culture, from magazines to art galleries. Celebrities, rock stars, movie stars: all have a special place on the white walls of the AIPAD. For the wealthy buyer, a picture by Philip-Lorca diCorcia could cost more than $45 000 at the David Zwirner gallery, while other visitors could head to Steven Kasher’s gallery to purchase an image of the Wall Street protestors signed by Accra Shepp for $60. Whether one comes to invest or just to admire, AIPAD remains a beautiful showcase for photography.

Jonas Cuénin

AIPAD 2012
From March 29 to April 2, 2012
643 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10065

Links

http:/www.aipad.com/

Visit Monroe gallery of Photographt, Booth #419

More here

JEFF WIDENER: Tiananmen Square Tank Man

Monroe Gallery of Photography is pleased to be representing photojournalist Jeff Widener.

 
Jeff Widener (born August 11, 1956 in Long Beach, California) is an American photographer, best known for his image of the "Tank Man" confronting a column of tanks in Tiananmen Square during the 1989 Beijing riots which made him a nominated finalist for the 1990 Pulitzer. Prior to the picture, Widener was injured during the night event of June 3rd, 1989 after a stray rock hit him in the head during a mob scene on the Chang-An Boulevard. His Nikon F3 titanium camera absorbed the blow, sparing his life. The "Tank Picture," repeatedly circulated around the globe, (except in China where it is banned) and is now widely held to be one of the most recognized photos ever taken. America On Line selected it as one of the top ten most famous images of all time.

Jeff grew up in Southern California where he attended Los Angeles Pierce College and Moorpark College majoring in photojournalism. In 1974 he received the Kodak Scholastic National Photography Scholarship beating out 8,000 students from across the United States. The prize included a study tour of East Africa.

 In 1978, Widener started as a newspaper photographer in California and later in Nevada and Indiana. At age 25, he accepted a position in Brussels, Belgium as a staff photographer with United Press International. His first foreign assignment was the Solidarity riots in Poland.

Through the years, he has covered assignments in over 100 countries involving civil unrest and wars to social issues. He was the first photojournalist to file digital images from the South Pole. In 1987, he was hired as Associated Press Picture Editor for Southeast Asia where he covered major stories in the region from the Gulf War to the Olympics. Other beats included East Timor, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Burma, Syria, Jordan, India, Laos, Vietnam, Pakistan and many more.

Widener is now based in Hamburg, Germany. The iconic Tiananmen Square photograph will be on exhibit in Booth B-500 during Photo LA, January 13 - 16, 2012.

More
Read: Eyewitness at Tiananmen Square, 1989
Interview with Jeff Widener, "Tank Man" Photographer

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"