REVIEW: "ICONIC CONSCIOUSNESS"



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

By Maylin Wilson Powell
The Albuquerque Journal
July 29, 2011

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



Read more: ABQJournal Online » Photos Capture History http://www.abqjournal.com/main/2011/07/29/north/photos-capture-history.html#ixzz1TUabZmqX
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JEROME LIEBLING, 1924 - 2011: "My concern is with the very structure of the picture"

Via Star-Tribune


Former Minnesota photographer Jerome Liebling, 87, who profoundly influenced the state's professional photography community during two decades teaching at the University of Minnesota, died July 27 in Northhampton, Mass.

Liebling taught at the University of Minnesota from 1949 to 1969. After serving with the 82nd Airborne in Europe during World War II, he had studied design and photography at Brooklyn College and then film production at the New School for Social Research in New York City. He was hired by the U. of Mn. to teach photography at a time when colleges were expanding their art and theater departments in response to a flood of returning G.I.s.

His early black-and-white photos were shaped by his common touch and deeply humanistic instincts. Politicians were a favorite Minnesota subjects, especially DFLers for whom he was the unofficial documentarian. Two of his six books also pay tribute to his Minnesota years: "The Face of Minneapolis" (Dillon Press, 1966) and "Jerome Liebling: The Minnesota Photographs" (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1997).
“He always had a deep love for Minnesota, and a special interest in working folks,” said his daughter Tina Liebling, a lawyer and DFL state representative from Rochester.

Among Liebling’s favorite photos was one of then U.S. senator Hubert Humphrey and Eugene McCarthy, then a Minnesota DFL Representative in Congress, at a baseball game in 1958. A decade later in the midst of the Vietman War, Liebling had that photo printed up as a poster and, with Tina, sold it on the street outside the Chicago convention hall in which Humphrey was nominated as the Democratic candidate for president, and McCarthy — as the anti-war candidate — mounted a bitter challenge that split the Democratic party and led to the election of Republican Richard Nixon as president.

My father served in the military during World War II and had a profound dislike of anything militaristic," said his daughter, Tina. "I wouldn't say he was a total pacifist, but he certainly was against the Vietnam War."

Jerome Liebling at Minnesota Center for Photography, Star Tribune staff photo by Marlin Levison

Jerome Liebling at Minnesota Center for Photography in 2006. (Star Tribune photo by Marlin Levison)

The Brooklyn-born photographer had lived in Amherst, Mass. since 1969 when he moved there to start a film, photography and video program at fledgling Hampshire College. An alternative school that emphasizes independent projects and student initiative, Hampshire had not even opened when Liebling arrived to interview for the job.
Graced by a wide ranging intellect and infectious interest in student work, he became a popular figure at Hampshire where he is memorialized in the recently renovated Jerome Liebling Center for Film, Photography and Video. Filmmaker Ken Burns is the most famous of his many Hampshire students. He taught there for 21 years before retiring at age 67 in 1990.

"As an educator, Jerry influenced a whole generation of filmmakers, many of whom studied here at Hampshire," the college said in a statement announcing his death. "In addition to his artistry, the legacy he leaves us is that of a gifted teacher, beloved mentor, and dear friend and colleague."

He is survived by his second wife Rebecca Nordstrom, a dancer; five children from his first marriage, which ended in divorce; and five grandchildren. The children, all surnamed Liebling, are Madeline (Mark Liebow) of Shelburne Falls, Mass.; Tina (Mark Liebow) of Rochester, Mn.; Adam of Cambridge, Mass.; Daniella (James Lane) of Brooklyn, N.Y; Rachael Jane of Brooklyn.

The now-defunct Minnesota Center for Photography staged a quasi-retrospective, "Jerome Liebling: Selected Photographs" in 2006. It sampled more than five decades of his career in about 70 images, many of them presenting working-class subjects with sympathetic but unsentimental dignity.

"My concern is with the very structure of the picture," Liebling told the Star Tribune in 2006. "Everything has to count, but basically it's an effort to get close to the world and to reflect it. The better I do that, the more sympathy and humanity is present."

Reviews: "A great collector discerns quality before anyone else notices it"

Monroe, Brando Ooze Hollywood Glamour in London Exhibition: Martin Gayford

Via Bloomberg


A great collector discerns quality before anyone else notices it.


John Kobal (1940-1991) was in Los Angeles in the 1960s at a time when the Hollywood studios were clearing out their libraries of still photographs. Kobal often was invited to take his pick, according to his friend the critic John Russell Taylor. At other times, he was tipped off when the images were being dumped so he would follow and fill his car.

Some of those gleanings can be seen in “Glamour of the Gods: Photographs From the John Kobal Foundation” at the National Portrait Gallery (through Oct. 23) in London. Here are glittering divas and handsome movie heroes from Gloria Swanson to Marilyn Monroe. By Monroe’s era, Kobal’s enthusiasm was running out. He was a star-struck romantic, and in his view the “gods” and “titans” of Hollywood belonged to the ‘20s and the ‘30s.

 

 "Elizabeth Taylor" (1948) by Clarence Sinclair Bull. The photograph is on display in "Glamour of the Gods" at the National Portrait Gallery in London until Oct 24. Source: National Portrait Gallery via Bloomberg


Those publicity shots he rescued are partly performance art. Joan Crawford told Kobal, “I photographed better than I looked so it was easy for me… I let myself go before the camera.” The result, in an MGM still from 1933 by Clarence Sinclair Bull, was a blend of regal beauty and emotional intimacy.

Crawford and the others were doing what they did best, acting to camera. The studio photographers were deploying, often brilliantly, all the arts of traditional portraiture: lighting, composition, costume and flattery. The latter took the form of extensive retouching.

Worry Lines

There’s a telling comparison between shots of Crawford by George Hurrell in 1930, before and after this treatment. Au naturel, she has worry lines and freckles -- still beautiful, yet vulnerably human. No goddess. This brings out a truth: The histories of painting and photography have always been closely intertwined (all the more so today thanks to Photoshop). These photographs are altered by hand-painting; conversely, of course, painters often use photography as a tool.

 

Clark Gable and Joan Crawford "Dancing Lady" (1933) by George Hurrell. The photograph is on display in "Glamour of the Gods" at the National Portrait Gallery in London until Oct 24. Source: National Portrait Gallery via Bloomberg



“Eyewitness: Hungarian Photography in the 20th Century,” an outstanding exhibition at the Royal Academy (until Oct. 2), demonstrates the same point in a different way. Robert Capa, one of the major photographers included, once remarked, “It’s not enough to have talent, you also have to be Hungarian.” That was a backhanded way of emphasizing how many masters of the camera emerged from Hungary betweeen 1920 and 1940.

 

"Satiric Dancer" (1926) by Andre Kertesz. The photograph is on show in "Eyewitness: Hungarian Photography in the Twentieth Century" at the Royal Academy in London until Oct. 2. Source: Royal Academy via Bloomberg


Just why that Central European nation was so photographically fertile is hard to say. What the major figures -- Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Brassai, Martin Munkacsi and Andre Kertesz -- had in common was modernism. They use the same tight geometrical structure and pared-down forms as a painter such as Mondrian, whose studio apartment was the subject of a marvelous photograph by Kertesz.

Line and Energy

Moholy-Nagy actually was an abstract artist as well as a photographer. Munkacsi’s “Four Boys at Lake Tanganyika” (1930) has the fluent line and bounding energy of a Matisse, found in the real world and recorded in a split second (this image inspired Cartier-Bresson’s whole career). A few years later, Munkacsi went to the U.S. and began the modern tradition of fashion photography, an artificial art if ever there was one.

Four Boys at Lake Tanganyika" by Martin Munkacsi. The photograph is on show in "Eyewitness: Hungarian Photography in the Twentieth Century" at the Royal Academy in London until Oct. 2. Source: Royal Academy via Bloomberg


If the actual scene didn’t quite have the correct arrangement of lines and surfaces, these photographers might adjust it. Kertesz moved Mondrian’s vase to create the right curve, while Capa may have staged his celebrated and endlessly controversial “Death of a Loyalist Militiaman” (1936).

That possibility only bothers those who confuse photography and truth. Like the still of Crawford sans freckles, Capa’s image of a falling Spanish Republican isn’t raw reality. It’s art.

“Glamour of the Gods: Photographs From the John Kobal Foundation” is at the National Portrait Gallery, London, through Oct. 23. Information: http://www.npg.org.uk.

“Eyewitness: Hungarian Photography in the 20th Century” is at the Royal Academy until Oct. 2, see http://www.royalacademy.org.uk. For more on the foundation: http://www.johnkobal.org/.

(Martin Gayford is chief art critic for Muse, the arts and leisure section of Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer on the story: Martin Gayford in London at martin.gayford@googlemail.com or http://twitter.com/#!/martingayford.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Beech at mbeech@bloomberg.net.

PowerHouse Books Publishes Age of Silver by American Photographer John Loengard

NEW YORK, NY.- Age of Silver is iconic American photographer John Loengard's ode to the art form to which he dedicated his life. Loengard, a longtime staff photographer and editor for LIFE magazine and other publications, spent years documenting modern life for the benefit of the American public. Over the years he trained his camera on dignitaries, artists, athletes, intellectuals, blue and whitecollar workers, urban and natural landscapes, man-made objects, and people of all types engaged in the act of living.

In Age of Silver, Loengard has focused on of some of the most important photographers of the last half-century, including Annie Leibovitz, Ansel Adams, Man Ray, Richard Avedon, Sebastião Salgado, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Harry Benson, and many, many others. Loengard caught them at home and in the studio; posed portraits and candid shots of the artists at work and at rest. Age of Silver reveals expertly composed portraits and elegant photographs of the artist's favorite or most revered negatives. This extra dimension to the project offers an inside glimpse at the artistic process and is a stark reminder of the physicality of the photographic practice at a time before the current wave of digital dominance. There is no more honest or faithful reproduction of life existent in the world of image making than original, untouched silver negatives.

Far from an attempt to put forth a singular definition of modern photographic practice, this beautifully printed, duotone monograph instead presents evidence of the unique vision and extremely personal style of every artist pictured. Annie Leibovitz is quoted in her caption as once saying, "I am always perplexed when people say that a photograph has captured someone. A photograph is just a piece of them in a moment. It seems presumptuous to think you can get more than that." However, by including not just portraits of the artists, but also of their negatives Loengard aims to capture something more than just a piece of each of photography's greats with Age of Silver.

In celebration of the book's release, Monroe Gallery of Photography, Santa Fe, NM will feature a major exhibition of Loengard's photographs November 25 - January 29, 2012.

John Loengard: 1981, New York City: James Van Der Zee photographs Eubie Blake, in an art gallery on Madison Avenue.






JOE McNALLY: NEW YORK - SANTA FE

One of the most rewarding aspects of our role as gallerists is the time we spend with photographers learning about their careers and experiences. After completing a hectic week of instruction at the Santa Fe Workshops, last night Joe McNally joined us for dinner and conversation. Joe's impressive biography spans more than 30 years, from his early days as a stringer for the New York Daily News to cover stories for Life, TIME, Newsweek, Fortune, New York, Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, and Men's Journal; as well as being a contribution photographer to National Geographic for over 20 years.

Joe was one of the last staff photographer's at Life, and we share many fond (and humorous) memories of the giants that came before him such as Alfred Eisenstaedt, Carl Mydans, Ralph Morse, and many others.

As New Yorkers who experienced September 11, 2001, we have been passionate admirers of one of McNally's most notable large-scale projects, "Faces of Ground Zero". This collection has become known as one of the most significant artistic responses to the September 11, 2001, tragedy at New York's World Trade Center, and in 2003 we exhibited four of the Giant Polaroids in the exhibition "Icons" following a Six city tour.

The entire Faces of Ground Zero project consists of 150 photographs taken with a one-of-a-kind camera, a 12-foot by 12-foot high Polaroid which takes pictures 40 inches wide by 80 inches tall - larger than life-size. Joe has stayed in touch with many of his subjects over the last ten years, and has recently been photographing updated profiles.

 Joe shared with us an advance copy of the new book, LIFE One Nation: America Remembers September 11, 2001, 10 Years Later.

The book’s description says it all:

"This expanded edition includes a new foreword by Tom Brokaw, reflections on how the nation has changed in the decade since 9/11, updates on the people involved that day, and new and exclusive portraits by award-winning photographer Joe McNally, who made indelible pictures at Ground Zero in the immediate aftermath of the tragic event.

For decades, Americans have turned to LIFE to see, understand, and remember the most important events of history. In addition to a powerful array of photographs taken by many of the world's greatest photographers, ONE NATION includes original essays by some of our finest writers. Contributors include David McCullough, Maya Angelou, James Bradley, Melissa Fay Greene, Margaret Carlson, Bob Greene and many others. To re-read these pieces today is to revisit an astonishing moment. There is an immediacy and passion to the writing that speaks, just as the photographs do, to what 9/11 was-and meant to us all."

Joe has organized a very special exhibition of his original Face of Ground Zero Polaroids alongside some of his recent portraits. The exhibit will take place at the Time Inc building during the 10^th anniversary of 9/11, be certain to see it if you are in New York.

Thank you for a great evening, Joe.

A Man and His Camera: A Night with Bill Eppridge

 

 John Lennon on the train from New York to Washington for the Beatles' concert at Washington Coliseum, Feb. 11, 1964

Back by Popular Demand

 

A Man and His Camera: A Night with Bill Eppridge

Thursday, July 28 7-9:00pm
$8; Members and Students, $5
To register in advance, call 203-259-1598

or register online.

Bill Eppridge will return to share even more stories about his experiences as a Life magazine photographer and his illustrious career spanning more than five decades. Eppridge’s iconic images are a testament to the importance of photojournalism in documenting history and range from the Civil Rights movement to the powerful image of a dying Robert F. Kennedy cradled in the arms of a busboy.

On View Through August 28, 2011: IMAGES 2011

Bill Eppridge Retrospective

Fairfield Museum and History Center

Lecture: My Faraway One: The Letters of Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz

New Mexico Museum of Art


WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3
 1915 - 1933
6:00 pm

In her long-awaited book, My Faraway One: Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz, Volume 1, 1915-1933 (Yale University Press, 2011), Sarah Greenough applies her formidable scholarship and insights to the engaging epistolary tale of one of the twentieth-century art world’s most famous couples. In more than 650 letters, selected and annotated by Greenough from thousands of pages, the two artists write candidly about topics including art, music, travels, friendships, and their powerful attraction to one another. This volume begins with the letters O’Keeffe and Stieglitz exchanged before they met, details through their passionate affair and marriage, and closes in the wee hours of New Year’s Day 1934, when Stieglitz was seventy years of age. In her lecture, Greenough will talk about tackling the voluminous correspondence of these two creative powerhouses and how their writings illuminate their works of art. Copies of the book are available for purchase in the museum shop. Sarah Greenough is the Senior Curator of Photographs at the National Gallery of Art. For a short biography about her career: http://www.nga.gov/press/bios/greenough.shtm For publishing information about the book: Yale Univeristy Press - http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300166309

Contact info here.

SAVE THE DATE - PHOTOJOURNALISM: A CONVERSATION

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

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

Santa Fe--Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, is pleased to present a very special evening of conversation between two of the preeminent names in American journalism, Richard Stolley and Hal Wingo. They will be discussing photojournalism – its

past, its present, and its future on Friday, August 5, 5 - 7 PM in conjunction with the exhibition "History's Big Picture". Seating is limited and on a first-come basis. The exhibition continues through September 25.

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

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

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

New Yorker Photo Booth: Recounting the Freedom Riders and Attacts on the Press

Maryland National Guard units patrolling the streets outside a laundry establishment after an outbreak of racially motivated violence

The view from The New Yorker’s photo department

Via The New Yorker
Photo Booth

July 21, 2011

Calvin Trillin Remembers Donald Uhrbrock

Posted by Elissa Curtis

 

In this week’s issue of the magazine, Calvin Trillin writes about his experience as a young reporter for the Atlanta bureau of Time, in 1960 and 1961. In the piece, Trillin describes a scene in which the photographer Donald Uhrbrock, who was covering the Freedom Rides for Life, was assaulted at the Trailways bus station in Montgomery, Alabama. Trillin, Uhrbrock, and Norman Ritter, the Life correspondent based in Atlanta, had followed the Freedom Ride bus from Birmingham in a car. When they arrived, the police caravan that had escorted the bus from Birmingham “melted away at the city limits,” Trillin writes.

“A man in a short-sleeved white shirt and a necktie—he looked like, say, a bus dispatcher—approached a TV cameraman, pulled out some sort of club, and took a swing,” Trillin told me. “The man in the white shirt seemed to be the leader of a small group of men who were there to attack first the press and then the Freedom Riders. Don was photographing this, and, of course was attacked himself. When they tried to get his cameras, he said he’d give them the film, and he handed it over. All this time, we were slowly moving down the parking lot toward the street, with violence breaking out sporadically. Suddenly, a man appeared and said something like ‘Let’s get them out of here.’ He said it with such authority that the attackers, presumably not knowing whether he was police or some high-ranking thug, let him push us toward a cab that was at the curb. He turned out to be a former Montgomery Advertiser reporter who’d arrived on another bus for a visit and had simply taken charge. I’m ashamed to say that I don’t know his name. As we got near the cab, I felt Don handing me a roll of film. ‘Put this in your pocket,’ he said. The roll he’d handed his attackers was blank. This roll had on it the picture that appeared in Life,” of one of the attackers kicking the TV cameraman.

Uhrbrock was a Pulitzer Prize-nominated photographer whose work for Life in the fifties and sixties covered the first astronauts, the civil-rights movement, and the Cuban missile crisis. A selection of his civil-rights-era photographs follows.

Photographs by Donald Uhrbrock/Time & Life Pictures/Getty

Calvin Trillin, working for Time, interviewing John Lewis in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1961

A cameraman being kicked by an unidentified man during a Freedom Rider demonstration

A lunch-counter scene. Many sit-in movements succeeded in desegregating lunch counters and other public facilities in the South

 A proponent of continued segregation

An African-American man is arrested in an encounter with white high-school students who were chasing other African-Americans

Martin Luther King, Jr., is escorted by police officers to a hearing on charges of probation violation following his arrest for assisting a student sit-in

A nonviolent protester is taken away by police at a civil-rights demonstration

Maryland National Guard units patrolling the streets outside a laundry establishment after an outbreak of racially motivated violence

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/photobooth/2011/07/calvin-trillin-donald-uhrbrock-civil-rights.html#ixzz1Sl0pibBz

BILL EPPRIDGE: IN A CLASS BY HIMSELF

Joe DiMaggio: In This Corner

July 19, 2011
 In my career I have been blessed with a few fortunate lucky right place, right time relationships. The first and foremost was attending the University of Missouri school of Journalism Workshop. It really doesn’t get better than that. The second would be assisting W. Eugene Smith who taught me more about communications then anyone. Actually, he taught me more about many things but for the purpose of this we won’t go there. When asked to deliver a keynote speech at the NPPA, one of the people I thanked was Bill Eppridge. I would love to tell you that I know Bill well but as the truth be known, that’s just is not so. But here’s what I do know. Bill Eppridge has very few peers. He stands alone with his great talent. He also has another quality that generally photographers don’t have. He’s an extremely humble about what he’s accomplished over the last few decades and he’s still a viable force to be dealt with. Bill invited me to his retrospective at the Fairfield Museum. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend. This past Sunday I had a little time off and decided to go to Fairfield, Connecticut to see the show. I thought I knew exactly what I was going to see. Boy, was I wrong. I had no idea the depth and scope of his work. Like many other photographers, we know about the positive RFK Photos, but the retrospective truly showed what an amazingly great talent he is. This is one of the few times I wish I was a great writer because there aren’t enough adjectives to express what an important body of work he has. Photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt, once told me, he had maybe only a dozen fine photographs. When I had the audacity to tell him, “no you have thousands of great photographs,” he smiled, clicked his heels and said, “one day you will understand.”


Thanks Bill for continuing to teach me the importance and power of a great still image.

 

 

Via Joe DiMaggio's In This Corner