"a damaging setback for press freedom in the United States"

Via Committee To Protect Journalists

May 21, 2013
Attorney General Eric Holder
Deputy Attorney General James Cole
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001

Via fax

Dear Attorney General Holder and Deputy Attorney General Cole:

The Committee to Protect Journalists was founded 32 years ago to fight for the rights of journalists around the world and defend their ability to report the news without fear of reprisal. Throughout our history our work has exposed abuses committed against frontline journalists covering conflict or working in repressive societies.

Our board of directors rarely has seen the need to raise its collective voice against U.S. government actions that threaten newsgathering. Today, however, we do see that need: We write you to vigorously protest the secret seizing of phone records of The Associated Press. The overly broad scope of the secret subpoena and the lack of notification to the AP by the Justice Department represent a damaging setback for press freedom in the United States.

We share the concerns of the AP, as expressed in a letter sent to you by President and CEO Gary Pruitt, and join the organization in demanding the confiscated materials be returned and the originals destroyed. (We note, for your information, that AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll is vice chairman of CPJ's board of directors).

The actions of your department undermine press freedom in this country. Just as troubling, they set a terrible example for the rest of the world, where governments routinely justify intervention in the media by citing national security.

We note, for example, that President Obama met Thursday with Prime Minister Erdoğan of Turkey, where at least 47 journalists--more than any country in the world--are jailed, mostly on national security-related charges. In meetings with his counterparts from repressive countries, President Obama should be able to press these issues and point to the United States as a country that has not sacrificed its deeply rooted commitment to press freedom in the name of national security. Sadly, the Justice Department's actions make it more difficult for the president to make that case.
We urge you to take immediate steps to ensure that the press is able to carry out its critical function without further unnecessary government intrusion. We ask that the confiscated phone records be returned to the AP and that you take action to guarantee that any future efforts to obtain phone records or other information essential to newsgathering is communicated to the news organization in advance so that the action can be challenged in court as justice demands.

Sincerely,

Sandra Mims Rowe
CPJ Chairman
Andy Alexander
Franz Allina
Christiane Amanpour
ABC News/CNN International
Terry Anderson
CPJ Honorary Chairman
Tom Brokaw
NBC News, CPJ Advisory Board
John S. Carroll
Rajiv Chandrasekaran
The Washington Post
Sheila Coronel
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Gerry Fabrikant
The New York Times
Josh Friedman
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Anne Garrels
Arianna Huffington
AOL Huffington Post Media Group
Steven Isenberg
CPJ Advisory Board
Jonathan Klein
Getty Images
Jane Kramer
The New Yorker
Mhamed Krichen
Al-Jazeera
Lara Logan
CBS News
Rebecca MacKinnon
David Marash
CPJ Advisory Board
Kati Marton
Michael Massing
Victor Navasky
The Nation
Andres Oppenheimer
The Miami Herald
Clarence Page
Chicago Tribune
Erwin Potts
CPJ Advisory Board
Gene Roberts
Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland
María Teresa Ronderos
Semana.com
David Schlesinger
Paul Steiger
ProPublica, CPJ Advisory Board
Jacob Weisberg
The Slate Group
Mark Whitaker
Matt Winkler
Bloomberg News

Jet Star Roller Coaster, Iconic symbol of Hurricane Sandy devastation, demolished

Stephen Wilkes: Hurricane Sandy, Seaside Heights, NJ, 2012

Demolition crews removing roller coaster sunk by Sandy
By Daniel Arkin, Staff Writer, NBC News

Via NBC News

 

 

A roller coaster that was plunged into the Atlantic Ocean after Super Storm Sandy ripped through the Jersey Shore last October and became a symbol of the devastation was being demolished Tuesday afternoon.

The partially submerged Jet Star coaster was once a popular destination at Casino Pier, an amusement park in Seaside Heights, N.J. But when Sandy ravaged the Jersey shoreline, destroying parts of the pier, the coaster tumbled into the ocean.

Watch live video at NBCNewYork.com

Footage recorded at the scene showed demolition crews beginning to rip apart what remains of the former thrill ride. The crews are expected to use barges in the water and on-shore equipment to dismantle and uproot the coaster, Casino Pier spokeswoman Toby Wolf told NBC New York.

The demolition will take roughly two days to complete, Wolf said.
Casino Pier has reportedly asked Weeks Marine, the construction and dredging company hired to tear down Jet Star, to salvage a piece of the fallen coaster, which park officials intend to install as part of a planned Sandy memorial, according to NBC New York.

Prince Harry, who earlier Tuesday visited the storm-battered towns of Mantoloking and Seaside Heights with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at his side, said that he saw the “American spirit” manifested in the coastal region's recovery from natural disaster.
The prince is scheduled to appear in New York City on Tuesday evening to promote British trade and a community baseball program.

Santa Fe Darkroom to Close After 19 Years

The Santa Fe New Mexican
May 14, 2013

Santa Fe darkroom rental firm going out of business

The popularity of digital photography is responsible for the demise of The Darkroom, a Santa Fe business which has rented darkrooms to film photographers for the last 19 years.
 

“It’s a labor of love,” owner Linda Wilson said of darkroom work. “I think there are still going to be people doing this kind of work, but there’s just not the need for it as there used to be. … I’m focusing on my personal work [film photography] now.”
 

Wilson said Diane DiRoberto started The Darkroom in the same spot at Suite O, 901 W. San Mateo Road, in 1994, then sold it to her four years ago. In addition to renting darkrooms, the business offered workshops and exhibitions of photography.
 

A farewell reception and exhibition of recent photography is set from 5 to 7 p.m. Saturday, May 18. That will be followed with a darkroom liquidation sale, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. May 25 and 26.
 

The Darkroom is unrelated to Camera and Darkroom at 1005 S. St. Francis Drive.

More: http://thedarkroomsantafe.com/

On this day, in 1961, thirteen civil rights activists dubbed Freedom Riders began a bus trip through the south

 

Via The Guardian

Jim Powell  guardian.co.uk, Saturday 4 May 2013 05.22 EDT

Freedom riders - picture of the day

A photographic highlight selected by the picture desk. On this day in 1961 the 'Freedom Riders' began their bus trip through the American South. Thirteen Freedom Riders left Washington, DC, in two separate buses with the aim of challenging segregated public transport in the South

Freedom Riders Julia Aaron and David Dennis sitting on board an interstate bus escorted by two National Guardsmen holding bayonets, on their way from Montgomery, Alabama, to Jackson, Mississippi

Paul Schutzer/Time & Life Pictures/Getty


Related:  On this day, in 1961, thirteen civil rights activists dubbed Freedom Riders began a bus trip through the south, carrying on the fight for justice sparked by Martin Luther King Jr.

 Via PBS:   Freedom Riders is the powerful harrowing and ultimately inspirational story from award-winning filmmaker Stanley Nelson of this six months in 1961 that chanved America forever. This saga, based on Raymond Arsenault's book of the same name, features testimony from a fascinating cast of central characters: the Riders themselves, state and federal government officials, and journalists who witnessed the Rides firsthand.

Watch a preview of Freedom Riders below

Watch Video Visit Website

Birmingham Students Reenact Historic March, 50 Years Later

1963: 50 Years Ago



Via NPR: Listen here

"In Birmingham, Alabama, today, young people marched peacefully through downtown. It was a reenactment of not-so-peaceful civil rights marches 50 years ago, when a Children's Crusade drew brutal resistance from segregationists and changed the heart of the nation."

NPR's Debbie Elliott has this look back.

DEBBIE ELLIOTT, BYLINEToday, Birmingham's students had permission to miss class for their historic march.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Wenonah, file behind the foot soldiers. Center Point High School, behind Wenonah. Back up this way.
ELLIOTT: The youth lined up in the street beside Kelly Ingram Park, where statues depict the police dogs and fire hoses that young marchers faced there 50 years ago.
The Children's Crusade was part of the Birmingham campaign, a calculated move by civil rights leaders to take their fight to a city so violently opposed to integration its nickname was Bombingham.
Here's the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. explaining the strategy.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED AUDIO)
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.: And I have the feeling that if we can get a breakthrough in Birmingham and really break down the walls of segregation, it will demonstrate to the whole South - at least the hard-core South - that it can no longer resist.
ELLIOTT: But in Birmingham, the resistance was fierce, led by Police Commissioner Bull Connor, the hardest of hard-core segregationists.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED AUDIO)
BULL CONNOR: You can never whip these birds if you don't keep you and them separate. I found that out in Birmingham. You've got to keep the white and the black separate.
ELLIOTT: The student marches in the spring of 1963 were just the beginning of a violent year that would culminate in the Ku Klux Klan bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church, where four black girls were killed. The scenes from Birmingham galvanized the nation and prompted President Kennedy to begin work on the Civil Rights Act. Now, 50 years later, the city is commemorating its crucial role.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Can somebody say Fred Shuttlesworth?
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: Fred Shuttlesworth.
ELLIOTT: At this city hall ceremony earlier this year, foot soldiers of the Birmingham movement were honored with the inaugural Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth Flame Award named for the local preacher who convinced Martin Luther King to launch the Birmingham campaign.
Honoree Tom Ellison says he started marching when he was just 5 years old and hasn't stopped since. Ellison was a classmate of Addie Mae Collins, one of the girls killed in the church bombing. And his father was a local minister active in the movement. He says the city has come a long way.
TOM ELLISON: Just even being in city hall sometimes is a miracle to me because I lived down town. I lived a block away from 16th Street Baptist Church, and we knew not to even come this way.
ELLIOTT: Ellison's experiences being jailed and beaten in the '60s led him to his career as a medical doctor because he says local doctors back then were afraid to come and treat injured marchers.
ELLISON: You weren't going to risk the rage of Bull Connor to come down and help.
(LAUGHTER)
ELLISON: So most often people just went home beaten and bruised and bleeding.
ELLIOTT: Leaders say this 50th anniversary year is a chance to acknowledge the culpability of the city's institutions that furthered segregation, for instance, the local newspaper.
BARNETT WRIGHT: The Birmingham News really did not do what it was supposed to do in 1963. The newspaper failed in its mission.
ELLIOTT: Barnett Wright is a reporter with the News today.
WRIGHT: Well, one example is on May 2nd when thousands of students left school to march. The Birmingham News did not put that story on the front page.
ELLIOTT: The top stories instead were about a pet snake and two people who scaled a mountain in Katmandu.
WRIGHT: So a story 8,200 miles away from the front doors of The Birmingham News was more important than a life-changing event.
ELLIOTT: Wright has compiled a book called "1963: How the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement Changed America and the World."
Today, hundreds of students stretched for two blocks to reenact the city's watershed events. Woodlawn High School student Reagan Harris was among the marchers.
REAGAN HARRIS: I'm very blessed to be here today to do this because back then we couldn't even cross the street with each other. But now, everyone is holding hands and rejoicing together. So I think it's a big responsibility to come out here and do this today.
ELLIOTT: The march was upbeat, more like a parade as a college marching band led the procession. A far cry from the billy clubs, police dogs and fire hoses 50 years ago.
Debbie Elliott, NPR News.

Copyright © 2013 NPR.

Related:

 April was a cruel month for black people in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963. So was May, and the months that followed, culminating in the explosion of a bomb in an church that September that killed four girls. Fifty years ago today, on May 2, 1963, teen-agers and children, some as young as six, marched in Birmingham to protest segregation. Many were arrested for parading without a permit, but the marchers came back the next day. They were viciously knocked down in the streets by torrents of water from fire hoses wielded by white policemen, were hit with batons or set upon by police dogs. Martin Luther King, Jr., who had been arrested in the city on April 12th—he was held for a week, during which he wrote his “Letter from Birmingham Jail”— referred to them as “the disinherited children of God.” The marches became known as the Children’s Crusade.

Memories of that tumultuous time came back this past weekend, during a three-day symposium marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Birmingham campaign sponsored by the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. Birmingham, 1963, was known as Bombingham: there had been some fifty dynamite attacks on black homes since the end of the Second World War. Birmingham had another label: the most segregated city in the South. Black people could spend their money in downtown stores but were not being hired or served. Continue reading  Via The New Yorker

"Life: The great photographers" exhibition in Rome

ROME.- Visitors look at Alfred Eisenstaedt's Marilyn Monroe, Hollywood, USA, 1953 during the Life. I grandi fotografi (Life. The great photographers) exhibition at the auditorium on April 30, 2013 in Rome. The exhibition showing some 150 pictures taken from 1936 when the US magazine Life magazine premiered will be open from May, 1 to August 4, 2013. AFP PHOTO / GABRIEL BOUYS

 A visitor looks at Alfred Eisenstaedt's “Albert Einstein in his Princeton studio, 1949”during the Life. I grandi fotografi (Life. The great photographers) exhibition. AFP PHOTO / GABRIEL BOUYS

A visitor looks at Lisa Larsen and Martha Holmes pictures during the Life. I grandi fotografi (Life. The great photographers) exhibition. AFP PHOTO / GABRIEL BOUYS

A visitor looks at Alfred Eisenstaedts “Children at the puppet show in the gardens of the Tuileries, Paris, 1936” during the Life. I grandi fotografi (Life. The great photographers) exhibition. AFP PHOTO / GABRIEL BOUYS

A visitor walks past John Loengard's The Beatles in a swimming pool during their first American tour Miami Beach, USA, 1964 during the Life. I grandi fotografi (Life. The great photographers) exhibition . AFP PHOTO / GABRIEL BOUYS

A visitor walks past J.R.Eyermans “Spectators with 3-D glasses at Bwana Devil’s premiere in Hollywood, USA, 1952” during the Life. I grandi fotografi (Life. The great photographers) exhibition . AFP PHOTO / GABRIEL BOUYS

A visitor looks at Joe Rosenthal's Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima 1945 during the Life. I grandi fotografi (Life. The great photographers) exhibition. AFP PHOTO / GABRIEL BOUYS AFP PHOTO / GABRIEL BOUYS

A visitor walks past VJ Day in Times Square, New York, NY, 1945 by Alfred Eisenstaedt during the Life. I grandi fotografi (Life. The great photographers) exhibition. AFP PHOTO / GABRIEL BOUYS

A visitor takes a snapshot of Robert Capa's “The falling soldier, Spain, 1936” during the Life. I grandi fotografi (Life. The great photographers) exhibition. AFP PHOTO / GABRIEL BOUYS

A visitor walks past John Loengards “The photographer’s eye, Brassai, Paris, 1961” during the Life. I grandi fotografi (Life. The great photographers) exhibition . AFP PHOTO / GABRIEL BOUYS


Via Artdaily.org May 1, 2013

"We felt that to understand war photography we had to understand war"

Nina Berman, American, born 1960.Marine Wedding, Ohio 2006. From the series Marine Wedding. Inkjet print, ed. #1/3. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, gift of an anonymous donor.

 

In case you missed this:

reFramed: In conversation with WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY curator Anne Wilkes Tucker

Via The Los Angeles Times
May 1, 2013

Q: How, and when, did the idea of the WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY exhibit come about?

A: In 2002, the museum acquired the print of Joe Rosenthal’s flag rising on Iwo Jima that is reliably thought to be the first print made from the negative. Rosenthal took it on a Friday, the negatives were sent to the big lab on Guam to be processed and then passed by censors and the man who developed the negative made a print for himself.
Will Michels, a photographer who works for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, came to me to talk about that print. For 10 years before coming to MFAH, Will was the restoration architect on the USS Texas battleship and in talking to World War II vets on the USS Texas during Iwo Jima, they talked about seeing the flag raised.
That discussion led to a small show of conflict photographs that the museum already owned, to more discussions about what we should acquire, and eventually to the decision to do an exhibition on the history of war photography


(click above link for full article and slide show)




Related:

Eddie Adams, Nina Berman, Margaret Bourke-White, Robert Capa, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Ashley Gilbertson, Yuri Kozyrev, Carl Mydans, Joe Rosenthal, Eric Smith,  Nick Ut, Sal Veder

Jeff Widener: The Making of a Photojournalist

“Tank Man” 1989, Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China

Via Resource Magazine
Vanessa Oswald   April 19, 2013


Resource‘s own Charlie Fish has interviewed Associated Press photographer Jeff Widener for our Spring 2013 Issue. The article, which includes iconic photographs taken one day after the Tiananmen Square Massacre, is featured below:

By Jeff Widener – Words by Charlie Fish

For seven weeks in the spring of 1989, student protesters occupied Tiananmen Square, located in the heart of Beijing. Their cries for more freedoms and government reform soon gained widespread traction, spurring sympathizers and support across more than 400 cities in the country.

© Jeff Widener/ Associated Press

However, a crackdown soon ensued. Party members who were in alignment with the cause were ousted. Martial law was declared, and more than 300,000 troops were deployed in Beijing. Between June 3rd and 4th, armed troops opened fire on unarmed civilians and protesters in the Square, resulting in what is known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre. In the aftermath of the riots, China instituted an immediate silencing of all discussion surrounding the events. Foreign journalists were kicked out of the country, and all forms of discussion or remembrance of the protests within China have been banned ever since. The death toll remains unofficial, with numbers ranging wildly from the hundreds to the thousands.

© Jeff Widener/ Associated Press

On June 5th, 1989, one day after the violence, as a column of 35-ton battle tanks barreled along
Chang’an Avenue, a lone man carrying two shopping bags stood on the avenue, determined to halt the procession with nonviolence. From the nearby Beijing Hotel, Associated Press photographer Jeff Widener snapped but a handful of images from his sixth-floor vantage point. It was a blur of activity, but a resulting image has gone on to symbolize one of the most significant and widely recognized moments in recent history.


Resource interviewed Jeff, whose eloquent retelling of the events surrounding that fateful day is candid, gripping, and harrowing. To this day, no one knows what became of the “Tank Man,” and many Chinese have never seen any of the images or videotapes from that day.

 

© Jeff Widener/ Associated Press

Part One: The Making of a Photojournalist

Early Influences.
I had a rather unconventional childhood. My father, Don Widener, was a city newspaper editor in Southern California and later an award-winning producer at KNBC in Burbank, CA… One day my father brought a LIFE magazine photographer friend, Leigh Wiener, to the house to make some family portraits. Leigh opened a battered leather bag and my eyes popped open. Inside was a toy store full of camera bodies, lenses, filters, light meters, motor drives and boxes of yellow Kodak film. I never forgot that sight, and the early seeds of photography formed.

Finding Photojournalism.
While attending high school, a photo instructor named Harry Ibach spotted me wandering the hallways with a beat-up Topcon Auto 100 camera. Harry offered to enroll me in his photography class and I accepted. This was my first taste of darkroom basics with developing and printing, but after time I realized something was missing. The class was mostly fine art while I was more interested in photographing people. During the 1972 presidential campaign, I rode my bicycle to a campaign rally held at a shopping mall. I sneaked past the press ropes and, after getting kicked out multiple times, a sympathetic news photographer hid me from the Secret Service and I photographed Senators George McGovern and Ted Kennedy. The series of images produced my first photography award in the 1972 Los Angeles Photo Center competition. Appropriately, it was in the photojournalism category. One day, Ibach showed the class the work of Czech photographer Josef Koudelka. It was a revelation—this was the direction I wanted to go, and it would have a profound impact on my work to this day. For me, his work captured the human condition more than anyone I had seen.

© Jeff Widener/ Associated Press

What it Takes.
I realized early on that I would have to earn my way in the world. My passion for photography was all consuming and I had to earn enough money to buy camera equipment. At age fifteen I managed an illegal night-shift job at a Jack In The Box restaurant. The hours were long; I often fell asleep in class. I hated the job, but flipping burgers brought in a new lens every two weeks. While other teens were making out in the back of their Volkswagens, I was riding around on a Schwinn bicycle with a 500mm lens over my shoulder. To be a successful photojournalist, there can be no doubt—especially these days. It takes an incredible amount of commitment and luck to make it.


Seeing “Tank Man” Among the Greats.
The photo of a lone man stopping a column of tanks during the 1989 Tiananmen uprising has become my signature image. But at the time, I was suffering from a severe case of the flu and a massive concussion, and really did not think much of the image. Though the photo grew in stature through the years, I became a bit ambivalent. Backtracking to 1971, while thumbing through the pages of a Time–Life photography book, a strange sensation befell me. Something told me that maybe, just maybe, I would some day have a great image like the ones in that book. In 2005, I was on the Internet and spied an AOL link headlined “The 10 Most Memorable Photos of All Time.” As I scanned the link, there was Nick Ut’s Vietnam napalm girl, Eddie Adams’ Saigon photo, the Kent State shootings, the Hindenburg crash from the 1930s, and even Buzz Aldrin standing on the moon. Then a familiar photograph appeared of a lone man standing in front of a column of tanks. A grin overcame me, and I think at that moment I finally realized I had something special… an iconic image.

© Jeff Widener/ Associated Press

On Experiencing Great Moments.
Sometimes I feel like one of these interplanetary space probes that shoot away at the solar system but take years to transmit all the data. The period leading up through the 1990s was a blur of nonstop airline flights and long queues at customs. Major world events became commonplace; nothing was out of the ordinary but, now looking back, I would have to say that some of the more memorable moments were: hitting seven Gs while flying inverted in an F-16 fighter jet. Asking astronaut Buzz Aldrin during a private breakfast what it was like taking off from the surface of the moon. Narrowly escaping a kidnapping by the Khmer Rouge during UN sponsored elections in Cambodia. The blackness of night in Hanoi as a cyclo peddled me to dinner. The multiple street demonstrations. The sheer awe of the Kobe earthquake in Japan, and the ash-buried Ford dealership in the Philippines following the Mount Pinatubo eruption. The bar nights with colleagues in Phnom Penh as gunfire crackled in the distance. Helping Dennis [Thatcher] with his point-and-shoot at the request of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher during a private boat trip on the Chao Phraya River in Thailand. Getting in a scuffle with a French photographer as Princess Diana giggled. Then there was the Pope arriving in the jungles of Papua New Guinea in his white jeep, arms outreached as natives beat drums and sang in Pidgin. I got choked up during the opening ceremonies of the 1988 Seoul Olympics when Muhammad Ali lit the Olympic flame. Standing on the South Pole while covering the National Science Foundation… This is only a small sample of what I have seen. Luck has played a major role in much of it.

© Jeff Widener/ Associated Pres

Part Two: That Day


Getting Past Customs and into China.
As the Southeast Asia Picture Editor based in Bangkok, it was my job to cover stories in the region. After being denied entry into China, I decided to fly to Hong Kong. I told the U.S. Embassy that I had lost my passport and they issued me a new one without previous Chinese immigration stamps. I then went to a small travel agency who organized a tourist visa for me. New York headquarters requested I carry in supplies and equipment, which concerned me—tourists don’t normally carry 600mm lenses and picture transmitters around in their luggage. Just as I was about to reach the customs official in Beijing Airport, a loud commotion rang out at the end of the counters. An old lady with a live chicken was arguing and yelling, so I slipped my baggage cart past the counter, through the sliding doors and out to a line of waiting taxis.


The Mounting Tension.
For a week my routine was to arrive at the Tiananmen Square at sunrise and document the pro-democracy supporters. I recall how organized they were and sensed their excitement and hope. This would soon change. On the late evening of June 3rd, 1989, an AP reporter and I peddled our bicycles to the Square, and I told him that I had a bad feeling that night. This was confirmed when a toothless old man later walked over to me, chattering something, and opened a heavy dark jacket. Inside was a large blood-soaked hatchet. He looked like the proud owner of a recently captured trophy fish. The fate of the victim was uncertain but unpromising. Minutes later a burning armored car came down the Chang Ahn Boulevard near the Great Hall of the People. Protesters followed and jammed steel barricades into the treads. My camera flash was low on power, and that situation became one of the most frustrating moments in my career.

© Jeff Widener/ Associated Press

Violence Erupts.
Action was everywhere but, as the APC burned, I could only make one image a minute. Suddenly my cameras were jerked from me as a mob started to wrestle. I feared I would be torn apart, as if by a pack of pit bulls. I raised my passport over my head and screamed, “American!” One leader came over and calmed the crowd. He ordered me to take a photo of a dead soldier on the ground. I managed one image of the protester holding a steel spike over the body. Then I spotted a man rolling around on the ground engulfed in flames. I looked down at the camera, waiting for the “ready” light to go on. The delay was agonizing but actually saved my life. The second I raised the Nikon, a massive blow struck me in the face, giving me a concussion. Blood was all over my shattered camera. Just then I looked up at the back door of the blazing APC. A soldier had jumped out to surrender, but the crowd moved in on him with knives, clubs, and rocks. I thought two things: 1) I was losing the Pulitzer Prize, and 2) I should feel ashamed, knowing the soldier would lose his life. There was nothing I could do. It happened so fast.


Bruised, Bloodied and with a Concussion.
The concussion was so bad I was asking protesters if anyone had a flash when I did not even have a complete camera to attach it to. I struggled back to the AP office, past burning and exploding buses and red tracers arching over the Tiananmen Square from large caliber machine-gun fire. It was like a slow-motion scene out of Apocalypse Now. Back at the office, Beijing photo chief Mark Avery had to pull my film out of the camera with pliers. The student-thrown rock had ripped the top of the Nikon F3 titanium body and shattered the mirror, as well as having bent the titanium shutter. The camera absorbed the impact, sparing my life. Had it been a lesser camera, I would not be doing this interview.

© Jeff Widener/ Associated Press

The High Risks of Getting the Shot.
AP New York headquarters sent a message to their Beijing office asking for someone to “not take any unnecessary chances but please photograph the occupied Tiananmen Square.” I was already rattled and scared and this was not what I wanted to hear. The best vantage point was the Beijing Hotel. I rode a bicycle past burned out buses and blood soaked pavement as the sound of distant gunfire rang out in the city. I am no hero and was scared to death. I can’t begin to explain what it’s like to put yourself in harm’s way when every muscle screams: run!


A Close Call at the Hotel.
I had a Nikon FE2 camera hidden in my back pocket and a 400mm lens in my jacket. Film was in my underwear. After arriving at the hotel, I walked passed Chinese security. I knew I had to think fast. They had used electric cattle prods and confiscated film from other journalists. In the shadows of the lobby was a young college kid named Kurt. I pretended to know him and we scrambled to the elevator as the approaching security turned and walked away. Kurt told me how only minutes before a truckload of soldiers had shot some guests in the front of the hotel. Their bodies were pulled inside by staff. Kurt narrowly escaped by hiding behind a taxi. After exposing all my film from the room’s sixth floor balcony, I asked him to try and find more film. He arrived two hours later with one roll of Fuji 100 ISO, which he wrangled from a remaining tourist in the hotel.

© Jeff Widener/ Associated Press

Fumbling For a Shot of the Oncoming Tanks.
When the sound of oncoming tanks came down the street, I told Kurt that the man in front of the tanks was going to “screw up my composition.” He yelled, “They are going to kill him!” I aimed my 400m lens and realized I was too far away. I gambled and ran for the teleconverter lying on the bed. I took three images until I realized the shutter speed was too low. By the time I figured out what happened, the man was whisked away by bystanders. To this day, nobody knows what happened to him. I recall sitting down in a chair adjacent to the window afterward with Kurt asking me if I got the picture. I was upset with myself because I had forgotten that the ISO was three stops less sensitive than my usual 800 ISO film. The shutter speed was on automatic but at 60th of a second. It would be impossible with a 800mm focal length lens to produce a sharp image. Kurt agreed to smuggle my film out of the hotel at great risk. Not finding the AP office, he handed the film over to the U.S. Embassy, which then forwarded it to the AP bureau, which was located inside the diplomatic compound.

A miracle had happened. One image was sharp enough and the next day fronted almost every major newspaper in the world, including two pages in LIFE magazine and the cover of  TIME.

© Jeff Widener/ Associated Press

The Gear.
The “Tank Man” photo was taken with a Nikon 400mm F5.6 EDIF internal focus lens with a Nikon teleconverter with a focal length of around 800mm. I had only one roll of Fuji 100 ISO film with three shots taken. The lens was later dropped and lost during the diplomatic compound shooting while fleeing down an alley. Rumors surfaced later that it had been found and was being used by a photographer in the Czech Republic.


The Day After.
The response was overwhelming. A clipboard of telegrams awaited me in the office with congratulations. Publications around the world wanted exclusive interviews. Even AP President, Lou Boccardi, sent a congratulatory message. Everyone was talking about it. The image went on to get nominated for the 1990 Pulitzer Prize, win the Scoop Award in France, the Chia Award in Italy and a number of other citations. My former high school teacher saw the picture on the front page of the Los Angeles Times without a byline. He took it to class to show his students, stating that every few years a photo icon is made and this was such a time. Later on, he received a copy of LIFE magazine with a note from me. It was the first time he realized the image was mine.

© Jeff Widener/ Associated Press

Recent Projects.

I am in the middle of a book project to pitch to publishers this spring. We envision it as a photo album of my work taken during my tour as Southeast Asia Photo Editor from 1987–1995. We hope to have it out for the 25th anniversary of Tiananmen in June of 2014.

THE LOVING STORY DVD is Now Available

The DVD version of THE LOVING STORY is available for home audiences. It can be purchased directly from Docurama, as well as on Amazon. The DVD will be shipped on May 28th for those buying retail, and April 30th for wholesale purchasers. Get your copy of this historic film today.

The Loving Story

“If a documentary can inspire us … to recognize the humanity of the people our laws demonize, then it has certainly done the nation a service.” Mother Jones

 

On June 2, 1958, a white man named Richard Loving and his part-black, part-Cherokee fiancee Mildred Jeter traveled from Caroline County, VA, to Washington, D.C. to be married. At the time, interracial marriage was illegal in 21 states, including Virginia. Back home two weeks later, the newlyweds were arrested, tried and convicted of the felony crime of “miscegenation.” Two young ACLU lawyers took on the Lovings’ case, fully aware of the challenges posed. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of the Lovings on June 12, 1967. This precedent-setting decision resulted in 16 states being ordered to overturn their bans on interracial marriage.

Awards:

Winner, 2013 George Foster Peabody Award
Winner, Best Use of Footage in a Factual Production, Focal International Awards 2012
Winner, WGA Screenplay Award, 2011 Silverdocs Documentary Festival
Winner, 2012 John E. O'Connor Film Award, American Historical Association
Centerpiece, 2011 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival
Nominee, NAMIC Vision Award

 

 

 

Related: Grey Villet: The Lovings

 

 

1963: "Pictures Paint A Thousand Words"

 

 

 

Carl Mydans ©Time Inc. 

On the 6:25 from Grand Central to Stamford, CT, November 22, 1963

 

Via The Albuquerque Journal

By Kate McGraw / For the Journal 

Friday, Apr 19, 2013

 

 

It is hard to believe it has been 50 years since 1963. That tumultuous year seems engraved in our memories. The Monroe Gallery of Photography on Don Gaspar is opening “Photographs from 1963,”a major exhibition of shots from one of the most pivotal years in U. S. history. The exhibition opens with a public reception from 5 to 7 p.m. today.

Gallery co-owner Michelle Monroe said 1963 was a year of change: “change in leadership and social change.”

“1963 ran the gamut of human emotion and human endeavor,” Monroe said in an exhibition statement. “It was a year that began with high hopes for easing of international tensions, a year that sustained a terrible period of shock and mourning and ended with a nation and a world community coming to understand a new maturity in its ability to cope with sudden and enormously difficult circumstances.”

Ernst Haas

Martin Luther King, Jr., Birmingham, 1963

“As the year began, George C. Wallace was sworn in as governor of Alabama, and during his inauguration address he stated, ‘Segregation now; segregation tomorrow; segregation forever!’,” Monroe recalled. “The year would continue: the U.S. performs the first nuclear test at the Nevada Test Site; the Beatles release ‘Please Please Me;’ the Birmingham police use dogs and cattle prods on peaceful demonstrators; and then there are church bomb attacks in Birmingham and, later, riots. President John F. Kennedy signs a law for equal pay for equal work for men and women as Gov. Wallace tries to prevent blacks registering at University of Alabama. Gov Wallace later prevents the integration of Tuskegee High School as James Meredith is awarded a bachelor’s degree by the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss), becoming the first black man to graduate from the school, and John F. Kennedy says segregation is morally wrong and that it is ‘time to act.’ Just hours after President Kennedy’s speech, civil rights activist Medgar Evers pulls into his driveway after returning from a meeting with NAACP lawyers and is struck in the back with a bullet and killed.

Charles Moore

Fire hoses aimed at Demonstrators, Birmingham, Alabama, 1963

 

“In 1963, President Kennedy visits West Berlin and delivers the ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ (I am a Berliner) speech; the major league baseball All Star MVP is Willie Mays of the San Francisco Giants; the Los Angeles Dodgers sweep the New York Yankees in the 60th World Series; ‘Cleopatra’ premieres in New York City, and 1963 draws to a close with President Kennedy assassinated. And on Dec. 26 the Beatles release ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’/'I Saw Her Standing There.’

Elizabeth Taylor, "Cleopatra", 1963

©mptv

 

“These and other events marked the year as a benchmark of unrest, tumult, and change, and all are represented in ‘Photographs from 1963,’” Monroe added. “We have seen many of these photographs numerous times in newspapers, magazines, books and documentaries. Universally relevant, they reflect the past, the present, and the changing times. These unforgettable images are imbedded in our collective consciousness; they are defining moments chronicling our shared history. The photographers in this exhibition have captured dramatic moments in a remarkable year, and illustrate the power of photography to inform, persuade, enlighten and enrich the viewer’s life.”

Photographs in this show are the work of a select group of photojournalists, many of whom worked for TIME and LIFE magazines. They include Charles Moore, Ernest Withers, Bill Eppridge, Steve Schapiro, Bob Gomel, Francis Miller, Stan Stearns and Eddie Adams.


If you go WHAT: “Photographs from 1963″
WHEN: Today through June 30; reception 5-7 p.m. today
WHERE: Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar
CONTACT: (505) 992-0800