History, One Photo at a Time

Click here for interactive look inside the archive

The Wall Street Journal
May 11, 2011

When my grandmother passed away a few years ago, it fell to me to clean out her apartment—after the good stuff was divided among family members or sold—and decide what should be thrown out and what kept. It was also up to me to preserve things such as photographs, some dating back to the 19th century, and postcards. The latter ranged from black-and-white scenes of Eastern European capitals in the 1920s to a view of the Empire State Building before it got its antenna to a 1940 color photograph of the brand new Pennsylvania Turnpike.

My mother was pretty good at being able to identify many of the faces in the photographs from the '20s and '30s—friends and relatives relaxing at the beach, having a picnic, going out for a spin in a roadster and my grandmother proudly posing alongside her cowboy tour guide during my grandparents' first trip to the U.S., in 1938.

There were also some people my mother couldn't recall, but that her parents surely would. Short of death, there are few things that remind one of the evanescence of life as profoundly as the realization that when loved ones go they often take with them, and forever, information they would have had at their fingertips.

I was also surprised that I seemed almost the only one in the family who had any interest in preserving all this stuff. I'm not sure what to chalk it up to—possibly sentimentality, a hoarding instinct or the belief that it remains important, though for reasons I can't quite articulate.

In any case, it's hard enough keeping track of this material across a couple of generations, let alone five of them, as the Meserve-Kunhardt Foundation, which I visited recently, has been able to do. And theirs aren't family photos, either. Started by Frederick Hill Meserve, the family patriarch, in the 1890s, and comprising more than 200,000 items, the collection constitutes one of the nation's greatest archives of Civil War and Abraham Lincoln photographs, taken by the likes of Matthew Brady and Alexander Gardner. The trove includes a lock of Lincoln's hair (with an accompanying handwritten note from Dorothy Meserve Kunhardt, Frederick's daughter, explaining its provenance) and the battered wooden boxes Matthew Brady took into the field for storing his negatives.

Gordon Parks/The Gordon Parks Foundation

The foundation has Gordon Parks photos of such luminaries as Muhammad Ali, pictured in 1970.

Furthermore, Meserve-Kunhardt owns the photographic archive of Gordon Parks, the celebrated Life magazine photographer. Mr. Parks, who died in 2006, was a civil rights trailblazer as Life's first African-American photographer. And he was a close friend of Philip Kunhardt, a managing editor at Life, and Mr. Meserve's grandson. "Gordon Parks, who was an old friend of our family and spent Thanksgiving at our home, was so impressed by this family keeping its collection together he decided he wanted the Gordon Parks Foundation to be established as a division of Meserve-Kunhardt," explained Peter Kunhardt Jr., the foundation's current director and Frederick Hill Meserve's great-great-grandson. "He was incredibly close with my grandfather on a personal level. That's a big reason why we have the Gordon Parks collection."

Within the last few years the Meserve-Kunhardt Foundation has also acquired the archive of another Life magazine photographer, Edward Clark, whose most famous image is that of the tear-streaked face of Graham Jackson, a Navy accordion player, taken as FDR's hearse passed on the way to the train station in Warm Springs, Ga. Meserve-Kunhardt's copy of the print is autographed by Messrs. Jackson and Clark.

The experience of visiting the foundation—located at SUNY Purchase in Westchester—is nothing short of thrilling, though one wouldn't normally associate sifting through old photographs with high excitement. (Then again, maybe I'm not the right person to ask, as I decided we had to save the pictures from the '30s of my grandmother flirting with her ski instructor in St. Moritz.) Open any drawer and you're pretty much guaranteed to get—please, oh, please forgive me, Henry Steele Commager, James MacGregor Burns, Shelby Foote, etc.—a Jell-O shot of American history.

The Meserve-Kunhardt Foundation

The foundation has a trove of Lincoln photos.

It starts with the Lincoln portraits. Indeed, there are so many of them that in 2009 the Kunhardts published "Lincoln Life-Size" a monograph devoted entirely to studies of Lincoln's face across a 20-year span from 1846 to 1865. But Lincoln is just the tip of the iceberg. While I fully understand that the earliest image of Lincoln ever taken might make stand the hairs on the back of the neck of a presidential historian but not excite everyone, who can resist Ed Clark's image of JFK taking a break from the pressures of the presidency to check in on baby Caroline in her crib?

The Kennedys apparently so liked the image that President Kennedy was photographed holding a framed copy of the picture. And Jackie Kennedy sent Mr. Clark a thank-you note in 1964 describing the picture as one of her favorites and adding, "I shall treasure it forever—as a reminder of such happy days—when we were all together…." The note is also part of the collection.

However, it's the Gordon Parks connection that lends the foundation much of its glamour—attested by the fact that the honorees at a June 1 gala for the Gordon Parks Foundation include Spike Lee, Karl Lagerfeld and Arianna Huffington, with Iman serving as mistress of ceremonies. Among the Parks works are intimate portraits of celebrities taken over the course of his eventful career and ranging from the likes of Aaron Copeland and Ingrid Bergman, in the throes of her love affair with Roberto Rossellini, to Muhammad Ali.

Cataloging the images has been a monumental undertaking, the Parks material just now reaching completion after a four-year process, the Ed Clark archive barely begun. And then there's "Pat The Bunny," the venerable children's book written by Dorothy Meserve Kunhardt, Frederick's Meserve's daughter and Peter Jr.'s great-grandmother. The Dorothy Meserve Kunhardt Collection includes manuscripts, drawings and the original, handmade 1940 prototype.

It also serves to remind that Meserve-Kunhardt remains very much a family affair. Indeed, Peter Jr. grew up with the Foundation's 1863 Alexander Gardner imperial albumen portrait of a seated Lincoln. "It hung in the living room over the fireplace," he remembered, "until we realized it shouldn't be in that environment."

Write to Ralph Gardner at ralph.gardner@wsj.com

Charles Moore: Civil Rights and Beyond

Via La Lettre de la Photographie


Charles Moore (1931- 2010) is the most important civil rights era photographer. His searing images of conflict between demonstrators and law enforcement helped propel landmark civil rights legislation.


Moore, the son of a Baptist preacher and car salesman, was born in Hackleburg, Alabama, not far from the birthplace of Helen Keller. In 1958, at 27 years old, as a photographer for the Montgomery Advertiser in Alabama, Moore was on hand to photograph the arrest of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. by two policemen. His photos of the event were distributed nationwide by the Associated Press, and one was published in Life magazine. This photo pushed the regional story into a national debate. It also launched Moore’s long, historic career producing images of the civil rights movement for a nation that would be “shocked and shaken in their conscience” by the images Moore put in their hands.

Over the next seven years, Moore made some of the most significant pictures of the civil rights movement. As a contract photographer for Life magazine, Moore traveled the South to cover the evolving struggle. His photographs helped bring the reality of the situation to the magazine’s huge audience, which at the time comprised over half the adults in the United States.

Some of the major civil rights era events that Moore covered:

the early efforts of Dr. King to desegregate Montgomery, Alabama, 1958-60;

the violent reaction to the enrollment of James Meredith as the first black student at the University of Mississippi, 1962;

the Freedom March from Tennessee to Mississippi, 1963;

the campaign to desegregate Birmingham, Alabama, 1963;

voter registration drives in Mississippi, 1963-1964;

Ku Klux Klan activities in North Carolina, 1965;

and the marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, 1965.

Moore also photographed the civil war in the Dominican Republic, political violence in Venezuela and Haiti, and the Vietnam conflict. In 1989, Charles Moore received the Kodak Crystal Eagle Award for Impact in Photojournalism. Moore died in March 2010, at age 79, in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.

His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Chrysler Museum, Norfolk; the High Museum, Atlanta; the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC; The Menil Collection, Houston; and many others.

Recently, the Steven Kasher gallery in New York present the most comprehensive exhibition of photography by Charles Moore ever undertaken by a gallery or museum. The exhibition, Charles Moore: Civil Rights and Beyond, featured approximately 60 prints, mostly vintage, drawn from the photographer’s estate.

PBS "FREEDOM RIDERS" DOCUMENTARY TO BROADCAST MAY 16

Paul Schutzer: Freedom Riders Julia Aaron & David Dennis sitting on board interstate bus as they and 25 others are escorted by 2 National Guardsmen holding bayonets, on way from Montgomery, AL to Jackson, MS, May, 1961




Kennedys, King Recall 1961’s Freedom Riders
Via Bloomberg


With a thriller’s pace and the emotional heft of a battlefield journal, PBS’s remarkable new documentary “Freedom Riders” recounts the bloody anti- segregation bus rides of 1961 that helped kill Jim Crow in the Deep South.

Combining new interviews with the aging riders with harrowing footage of their brave, battered younger selves, “Freedom Riders” brings to vivid life a wrenching moment in American history. Fifty years on and with the movement’s successes long charted, this installment of PBS’s “American Experience” reconstructs those tense weeks with edgy momentum.

In May 1961, civil rights activists, both black and white, boarded several Greyhound and Trailways buses in Washington D.C., en route to New Orleans. At various points, including Birmingham, Alabama, and Jackson, Mississippi, the nonviolent participants would challenge state laws by ignoring signs separating “whites” and “coloreds” at bus-station waiting areas and diners.

Though hardly naive, the riders (and, quickly enough, the nation) were stunned by the savage response. In Anniston, Alabama, a full bus was torched and the riders attacked with baseball bats as they disembarked. Birmingham police, led by the defiantly racist Bull Connor, looked away as the local Ku Klux Klan beat male and female civil-rights activists senseless.

Call From Kennedys

“Freedom Riders” also delves beyond the history-book basics, revealing behind-the-scenes machinations of the nation’s most powerful men.

President John Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, consumed and distracted by Cold War politics, were drawn inexorably into the headline-making Southern chaos. Martin Luther King, at first opposed to the dangerous campaign, soon became a symbol of the movement, even as younger activists questioned his relevance.

With a thorough roster of interviewees, writer and director Stanley Nelson weaves together various strands and perspectives into propulsive storytelling. Among the participants: John Patterson, the governor of Alabama who refused a telephone plea for help from the Kennedys, and John Seigenthaler, an administrative assistant to Robert Kennedy sent to quell the violence.

But the story belongs to the riders: Charles Person, a Morehouse College student and youngest member of the first wave of activists; Diane Nash, a student leader in Nashville, Tennessee, who organized replacements when the initial riders were beaten and arrested; and Jim Zwerg, a white student from Wisconsin attacked by Klansmen.

Those three are just a few of the more than 400 people who eventually boarded the nation’s buses that summer in the name of civil rights. Nelson does them all justice.

“Freedom Riders” airs May 16 on PBS at 9 p.m. New York time. Check your local listings.

(Greg Evans is a critic for Muse, the arts and leisure section of Bloomberg News. Opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer on the story: Greg Evans at gregeaevans@yahoo.com

2011: WOMEN IN PHOTOGRAPHY

Two seemingly disparate blog posts caught our attention today:

Hillary Clinton, Audrey Tomason go missing in Situation Room photo in Der Tzitung newspaper

The Washington Post
By Melissa Bell


Update: Der Tzitung responded in an emailed statement, that the photo editor did not read the fine print on the picture and the newspaper has since apologized to the White House and State Department. “In accord with our religious beliefs, we do not publish photos of women, which in no way relegates them to a lower status... Because of laws of modesty, we are not allowed to publish pictures of women, and we regret if this gives an impression of disparaging to women, which is certainly never our intention. We apologize if this was seen as offensive.” Read the full statement at the bottom of this post.



Why Is a Photojournalist’s Gender Relevant to Their Work?

Black Star Rising
by Paul Melcher
I’ve never been able to identify a photojournalist’s gender from the photos she takes. Have you?


When Margaret Bourke-White photographed the Nazi death camps for Life magazine, no one cared if she was a woman or not. Her images told the story and that was that.

So why is it so important for some photographers to define themselves as “women photojournalists,” rather than simply as “photojournalists”?   Full post here. One rebuke here.


We are not sure if there is a broader context to these two posts....your thoughts?

New York Photo Festival - May 11-15, 2011

Photo: Balazs Gardi

New York Photo Festival - May 11-15, 2011


CURATED BY ENRICO BOSSAN AND ELISABETH BIONDI


Taking place throughout DUMBO, Brooklyn.

Ticket information here. Tickets will also be available at 1 Main Street Storefront, starting Thursday, May 12 @ 11am


Exhibition Hours
Wednesday, May 11 - 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Thursday, May 12 - 12:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.
Friday, May 13 - 11:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Saturday, May 14 - 11:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Sunday, May 15 - 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.

https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/172633


Full details here

This year’s main exhibitions, curated by Enrico Bossan and Elisabeth Biondi (on show at the 81 Front Street Storefront) are presented under the shared rubric PHOTOGRAPHY NOW: engaged, personal, and vital. They offer distinct perspectives on a shared theme: the state of documentary photography today.

Bossan’s show, entitled Hope, features the work of young photographers who, in his words, "neither provide a faithful representation of reality nor create an illusion, but who have impressed me with their ability to capture the essential aspects of life." These artists include Olivia Arthur, Clemence de Limburg, Matt Eich, Simona Ghizzoni, Andrea Gjestvang, Sean Lee, Margo Ovcharenko, Andy Spyra, Mikhael Subotzky, Ali Taptik and Peter van Agtmael. Bossan grants that photography can portray the world at its bleakest, but suggests that it can also—and, in fact, must—remain oriented toward what lies ahead.

Curated by Elisabeth Biondi, Subjective/Objective argues that documentary photography today is remarkably vibrant and creatively thriving, despite the bleak financial picture and vanishing support from a publishing industry challenged by digital media. She has selected photographers who refract reality through their own distinct visions, often venturing into more personal visual languages. Subjective/Objective will include the work of Alejandro Chaskielberg, Stefano De Luigi, Carolyn Drake, Martine Fougeron, Balazs Gardi, Jessica Hines, Ethan Levitas, Irina Werning and A Yin.

In addition to their respective exhibitions, Bossan and Biondi are jointly curating a room of work by photographers Shaul Schwarz and Richard Mosse that reveals the common ground in the curators’ perspectives.

A separate venue, located at 30 Washington Street, will feature multimedia works by artists CIA DE FOTO and Ben Lowy, as well as six viewing booths featuring work by such industry luminaries as MediaStorm and Panos Pictures.

About the New York Photo Festival

Designed to be a New York counterpart and thematic successor to the prestigious European photo festivals Les Rencontres d’Arles, PHotoEspaña, Perpignan and Visa pour l’Image—and American festivals such as FotoFest in Texas—the New York Photo Festival creates an international atmosphere of inspiring visual installations, professional and aficionado fellowship and camaraderie, and news-worthy staged presentations, awards ceremonies, and symposia over the course of four-and-a-half days during the busiest photography month in New York City.

The festival was founded by Daniel Power and Frank Evers. The inaugural NYPH (May 14–18, 2008) proved an astounding success, with over 15,000 tickets sold, 2,500 industry professionals and artists, 1,000 members of the international press, packed seating for all day and evening programming events at St. Ann’s Warehouse (450 capacity), 20 countries represented in curated and satellite pavilions, 85,000 clicked site visits, 47,000 blog posts, 2.5 million unique visits to www.nyphotofestival.com, 49 media partners, and over 3,000 submissions from 87 countries for the New York Photo Awards (www.newyorkphotoawards.com). Each year, the New York Photo Festival has been bigger in all respects.

The festival is headquartered in DUMBO, Brooklyn, NY.

MOTHER'S DAY, 2011

Nina Leen: Housewife Marjorie McWeeney under Helene Curtis brand hairdryer as she has a manicure while keeping an eye on her baby beside her in his bassinet at beauty parlor. Rye, NY, June 1947

...AND THEY'RE OFF!

Neil Leifer: The 1965 Kentucky Derby, with Lucky Debonaire and Bill Shoemaker, Churchill Downs, May 1, 1965.

Neil Leifer: The First Turn,  1965 Kentucky Derby

 

It’s really easy to name the most incredible athlete I’ve ever seen, and I always say it was Muhammad Ali, but when you really sit down to think about it, I’m not so sure that the most incredible performance I’ve ever seen was at an Ali fight. I’ve never photographed Tiger Woods, but watching Tiger on television in 2000 gave you the same feeling as watching Secretariat run away with the Triple Crown races in 1973. This picture was taken at the finish line of the Kentucky Derby. Look closely at it: have you ever seen a more powerful-looking athlete, or should I say a horse? It also clearly shows how convincing Secretariat’s Derby victory was, and this victory wasn’t nearly as convincing as the one he would pull off at the Belmont Stakes five weeks later. The picture is also very different from the traditional under-the-rail finish line shot. I forgot about the famed spires for this picture and isolated Secretariat. It was a gamble, but it worked out beautifully. I had no idea how great Secretariat was, and what a legend he would become. Five weeks later everyone knew. People had always talked about a Triple Crown winner when I was growing up, but it seemed like it would never happen again. Then along came Secretariat, and not only did it happen, but in a style so convincing that it was hard to believe that any single athlete/horse could be so better than his competition.
 -- Neil Leifer

Neil Leifer: Secretariat, The Kentucky Derby, Churchill Downs, Louisville, KY, May 5, 1973

The Kentucky Derby Website

COMPOSING THE ARTIST

Steve Schapiro: Rene Magritte, Museum of Modert Art, New York, 1965

Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, is pleased to announce "Composing The Artist", an extensive survey of more than 50 classic photographs portraying iconic personalities from the arts as captured by renowned photographers. The exhibition opens with a reception on Friday, May 6, from 5 to 7 PM. "Composing The Artist" will continue through June 26.


The common definition of an "artist" is one who is able, by virtue of imagination and talent or skill, to create works of aesthetic value, especially in the fine arts. Photographs of artists and writers across the centuries have shaped our sense of what they do. Photographs in the exhibit include images of visual artists and classic writers, at work, in quiet contemplative moments and in portraiture. In these photographs the essential personality of the artist is revealed, and an image of the past becomes visual history. Other pictures also brilliantly match artworks with the personality and appearance of their creators: they are not just at one with their working environment, they are their work.

View the exhibit here.


Related: Guardian Newspaper Series: Photographer Steve Schapiro's Best Shot

THEN, AND NOW: GROUND ZERO

Eric Draper: Ground Zero, New York City, September 14, 2001

May 5, 2011: On a morning so clear, so blue and so sunny that it recalled the morning of September 11, 2011, President Barrack Obama arrived in New York  to lay a wreath at the 9/11 Memorial and meet with families of September 11 victims and, along the way, to meet with firefighters at a Midtown firehouse that lost 15 men on September 11.

Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Obama laid a wreath at ground zero on Thursday, May 5, 2011

Charles Dharapak / AP



Related:

NY Firefighters Gather for News of Bin Laden



Joe McNally - The Faces of Ground Zero

ERNST HAAS: New York: Magic City

Clouds and Skyline, New York, 1957

ERNST HAAS "NEW YORK, MAGIC CITY" IN PARIS

May 6 - June 4, 2011

Details here. (in French)

Gallerie Basai Embiricos

Gallerie Photo 12


Ernst Haas (1921-1986) is considered one of the most important photographers of the second part of the 20th century. Haas attended medical school in Austria, but, in 1947, left to become a staff photographer for the magazine Heute. His photo essay for the magazine on prisoners of war coming home to Vienna won him acclaim and an offer to join Magnum Photos from Robert Capa. Haas and Werner Bischof were the first photographers invited to join Magnum by the founders Capa, David "Chim" Seymour, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and Bill Vandivert.

Haas moved to New York City and in 1953 produced a 24-page, color photo essay on the city for Life Magazine. Life then commissioned similar photo spreads on Paris and Venice. In 1962, the Museum of Modern Art mounted a one-man show of Haas' color photos. Haas' first photo book, Elements, was published the next year.

In 1964, film director John Huston hired Haas to direct the creation sequence for Huston's 1964 film, The Bible. Haas continued working on the theme, producing the photo book, The Creation in 1971. Other photography books by Haas included In America in 1975, a tribute to his adopted country for its bicentennial year; Deutschland in 1977; and Himalayan Pilgrimage in 1978. Other films that Haas worked on included The Misfits in 1961, Hello, Dolly! in 1969, Little Big Man in 1970, and Heaven's Gate in 1980. Haas also photographed a number of advertising campaigns for Marlboro cigarettes.

In 1986, Haas received the Hasselblad Award for his photography. He died September 12, 1986. (More here)

The Paris exhibitions are conducted under the direction of Victoria and Alex Haas will include a selection of previously unpublished photographs. It will include vintage prints, contemporary prints and dye transfer prints.

Related - New Book: Colour Correction by Ernst Haas, published by Steidl

The Cross, New York, 1966

50 years later, Freedom Rides still resonate

The first Freedom Ride took place on May 4, 1961 when seven blacks and six whites left Washington, D.C., on two public buses bound for the Deep South. They intended to test the Supreme Court's ruling in Boynton v. Virginia (1960), which declared segregation in interstate bus and rail stations unconstitutional.


In the first few days, the riders encountered only minor hostility, but in the second week the riders were severely beaten. Outside Anniston, Alabama, one of their buses was burned, and in Birmingham several dozen whites attacked the riders only two blocks from the sheriff's office. With the intervention of the U.S. Justice Department, most of CORE's Freedom Riders were evacuated from Birmingham, Alabama to New Orleans. John Lewis, a former seminary student who would later lead SNCC and become a US congressman, stayed in Birmingham.
 
 

Joseph Postiglione

(Collection of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute)

The aftermath of a mob attack on a Freedom Ride bus in Anniston, Alabama

CORE Leaders decided that letting violence end the trip would send the wrong signal to the country. They reinforced the pair of remaining riders with volunteers, and the trip continued. The group traveled from Birmingham to Montgomery without incident, but on their arrival in Montgomery they were savagely attacked by a mob of more than 1000 whites. The extreme violence and the indifference of local police prompted a national outcry of support for the riders, putting pressure on President Kennedy to end the violence.

The riders continued to Mississippi, where they endured further brutality and jail terms but generated more publicity and inspired dozens more Freedom Rides. By the end of the summer, the protests had spread to train stations and airports across the South, and in November, the Interstate Commerce Commission issued rules prohibiting segregated transportation facilities.  (via CORE)

More: It’s been 50 years now, but there are times when Charles Person still finds it hard to talk about the summer of 1961 without his voice breaking.

Steve Schapiro: Summer of 1965 Freedom Bus Riders

MAY 4: ANNIVERSARY OF KENT STATE SHOOTING



"On May 4th, 1970, John Filo was a young undergraduate working in the Kent State photo lab. He decided to take a break, and went outside to see students milling in the parking lot. Over the weekend, following the burning of the ROTC building, thousands of students had moved back and forth from the commons area near to the hill in front of Taylor Hall, demonstrating and calling to an end to the war in Vietnam. John decided to get his camera, and see if he could get an interesting picture. He saw one student waving a black flag on the hillside, with the National Guard in the background. He shot the photograph, and feeling that he now had recorded the moment, wandered to the parking lot, where a lot of the students had gathered. Suddenly, G company of the Ohio National Guard opened fire. John thought they were shooting blanks, and started to take pictures.

A few second later, he saw Mary Vecchio crying over the body of one the students who had just been killed, Jeffrey Miller. He took the picture.

A few hours later, he started to transmit the pictures he had taken to the Associated Press from a small newspaper in Pennsylvania."
©Dirck Halstead, The Digital Journalist

The photograph won him a Pulitzer. To take the picture John used a Nikkormat camera with Tri X film and most of the exposures were 1/500 between 5.6 and f 8.

Note: An altered version of John Filo's famous picture has over the years been published a number of times instead of the real Filo Pulitzer Prize Winner shown on below. The altered version appeared as recently as May 1st, 1995 in the LIFE magazine article, "Caught in time" , page 38. At some point in the early 1970s someone removed a pole that was apparently sticking out of Vecchio’s head. Time has all of it’s articles on line, unfortunately without photos. Life ran the altered image in an article in May, 1995. David Friend, Life’s Director of Photography, attempted to justify this use – he stated that “LIFE did not and does not manipulate news photos. The photo we published was supplied to us by our photo library–the Time-Life Picture Collection….Amazingly, the fence post had been airbrushed out by someone, now anonymous, in a darkroom sometime in the early 1970′s. The picture had run numerous times–without the fencepost, and without anyone taking notice–in TIME (Nov. 6, 1972, p. 23) PEOPLE (May 2, 1977, p. 37), TIME (Jan. 7, 1980, p. 45), PEOPLE (April 31, 1990, p. 117) to name just a few publications. (via http://www.hennemanphoto.com/)



Related:
National Public Radio: "Shots Still Reverberate For Survivors Of Kent State"

"Out in the world, when people talk about the shootings at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, they call it "Kent State." But in the small town of Kent, 35 miles south of Cleveland, and on the university campus, they call it "May 4th." The full multi-media article is here.

Listen to John Filo recount the making of the photograph here.

John Filo was reunited with the photograph's subject, Mary Vecchio.

NY Firefighters Gather for News of Bin Laden

Michael Appleton for The New York Times



Via The New York Times Lens Blog

Firefighters Gather for News of Bin Laden

By DAVID W. DUNLAP


Michael Appleton managed to bridge a decade in a single photograph on Sunday night

His perfectly distilled picture showed the firefighters of Ladder Company 4 — which lost seven men on 9/11 — perched together on their aerial ladder, watching a news bulletin in Times Square declaring that Osama bin Laden was dead. Though their backs were to the camera, the men’s body language spoke eloquently, beginning with Firefighter Stassi’s obvious exultation. “Each individual has his own reaction,” Mr. Appleton said. “One is celebrating. Others are about to embrace. They’re tight. They’re close.


“It’s like the weight is off their shoulders, perched up there, enjoying each other’s company, shoulder to shoulder. And it was over very quickly.”

Like most of the best news photographs, Mr. Appleton’s composition was the product of pure luck and the experience — and the sharp eyes — to know what to do when such good fortune comes along. Asked by The Times to get himself to Times Square for President Obama’s announcement on Sunday, Mr. Appleton found a somewhat mellow mood at about 10:30 p.m., as news of the killing was not yet generally known. As the president began to speak, however, the crowd grew larger and more attentive.

“There was a crescendo when the Fire Department showed up,” he said.

Ladder Company 4 — the “Pride of Midtown,” together with Engine Company 54 and Battalion 9 — parked its rig in the middle of Broadway. Mr. Appleton tried to get aboard the truck to photograph the appreciatively cheering crowd. But lots of other onlookers had the same idea until the firefighters chased them off before seating themselves on the ladder.

“They were starting to line up,” Mr. Appleton said. “I looked across street at Bubba Gump’s and I could see there was a second-floor window that would give me the vantage I needed. I envisioned the photo before I went up.”

It took a moment to persuade the manager. In that time, Mr. Appleton feared this precious confluence would simply evaporate. Instead, by the time he positioned himself in the restaurant’s window, there were more firefighters side by side on the ladder. Then it was a matter of waiting for the illuminated zipper across Broadway to display the full message.

Mr. Appleton, 33, has been engaged with this story since it began, when he was assigned by The Daily News to cover St. Vincent’s Hospital and wound up instead with extraordinary pictures of the towers’ collapse.

“My career really started on 9/11,” he said by telephone on Monday, after covering the mayor’s news conference on no sleep whatsoever. “It was my baptism by fire.”

Related: Then and Now: VJ-Day and the death of Osama bin Laden

THEN AND NOW: V-J DAY AND THE DEATH OF OSAMA BIN LADEN

©Michael Appleton for The New York Times


The news of the death of Osama bin Laden by US Forces has led to a huge spike of hits to our blog post about VJ-Day. Alfred Eisenstaedt's photograph of a sailor and a nurse kissing amidst the celebrations in Times Square for "Victory over Japan" has become a visual symbol of the joy surrounding the end of World War II. Today, images of celebrations and reactions to the news of Osama bi Laden's death are being published everywhere (the Newseum's daily post of notable front-pages of newspapers from around the world crashed earlier today from overwhelming traffic).

Will a single image come to represent the defining moment in the American-led fight against terrorism?

EXHIBITION PREVIEW: COMPOSING THE ARTIST

John Loengard: Richard Avedon, New York, NY 1994

THE Magazine
Santa Fe's monthly Magazine of and for the Arts
May, 2011

Composing The Artist
May 6 through June 26
Monroe Gallery of Photography
112 Don Gaspar Avenue, Santa Fe, 505.992.0800
Reception: Friday, May 6, 5 - 7 PM

There are rarely sufficient words to describe an artist's personality and work. Often it takes a fellow creator to capture the essential nature of the artist. Richard Avedon's severe, black and white images dramatically expose the nature of his subjects. His portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Twiggy, and mental hospital patients are defining images in the annals of American photography. John Loengard's photo essays for LIFE magazine, which include series on Georgia O'Keeffe and the Shakers, earned him the title of one of America Photo's "one hundred most influential people in photography". in 2005. In 1994, Loengard captured Avedon seated before the clutter of his studio. Loengard's photograph of Avedon, straddling a chair and twiddling his glasses, captures the quiteness of a photographer known for his intense and energized images. On may 6, the Monroe Gallery of Photography will open an exhibition entitled Composing The Artist, where viewers can see Loengarg's image of Avedon in addition to many more photographs of renowned creators. Over 50 images will be shown, capturing iconic artists and writers at work or in portraiture. The short list includes Salvador Dali, Georgia O'Keeffe, William Faulkner, Allen Ginsberg, Andy Warhol, and Vladmir Nobokov. In these photographs, the essential personality of the artist is revealed, and an image of the past becomes visual history.

The Vietnam war ended on April 30, 1975. Many of the photographs that came out of that war are still etched in our minds

In this March 1965 file photo, hovering U.S. Army helicopters pour machine gun fire into a tree line to cover the advance of South Vietnamese ground troops in an attack on a Viet Cong camp 18 miles north of Tay Ninh, northwest of Saigon near the Cambodian border, in Vietnam. (AP Photo/Horst Faas

 

Little has been made of this anniversary. Thanks to TampaBay.com All Eyes Blog.

Andreas Feininger: Nature and the Architect at the National Gallery of Canada

Andreas Feininger, Reflection on a Car, 1980. Gelatin silver print, 40.4 x 50.3 cm; image: 38 x 48.2 cm. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Gift of the Estate of Gertrud E. Feininger, New York, 2009. Photo: Andreas Feininger © AndreasFeiningerArchive.com, c/o Zeppelin Museum Friedrichshafen


Via artdaily.org

OTTAWA.- Two years ago, the National Gallery of Canada (NGC) received an extraordinary donation of 252 exquisite photographs by Andreas Feininger, one of the greatest modernist photographers. Best known for his dynamic urban views of Manhattan and Chicago, Feininger left a legacy on his 1999 death at 93 of 346 Life magazine photo-essays, thousands of photographs and more than 50 publications. Beginning this Saturday, until August 28, visitors to the NGC can enjoy 27 of these remarkable works in Gallery C202b.


"Andreas Feininger's photographs reveal his technical virtuosity and his incisive eye," said NGC director Marc Mayer. "We are grateful to his family for the gift of these important works."

Modernist photographer Andreas Feininger's vast body of work spans a period of nearly six decades. From his dynamic urban views of New York to his extreme close-ups of natural forms, Feininger's work shows his instinct for graphic forms and patterning, and his ability to highlight the sculptural qualities of objects. His urban scenes convey his excitement at the visual complexity of city life, while his macro-photographs of shells and bones, often interpreted through a highly surrealist lens, demonstrate his fascination with the elegant precision of nature.

Feininger's vision is unified by an attraction to the organizing principles behind both constructed and natural forms. After studying at the Bauhaus in Germany, and training as an architect, Feininger worked in Paris and Stockholm before establishing his career in the United States, first as a photographer for the Black Star Picture Agency and then with Life magazine. He was technically inventive, devising his own super-telephoto and super-close-up cameras. He even built his own radio in 1927, seen in his self-portrait of that year. This selection of 27 photographs reveals the keen insight of a photographer who never ceased his quest for order and beauty in the world around him.

Several other exquisite photographs by Feininger will be included in the exhibition Made in America 1900-1950. Photographs from the National Gallery of Canada, opening this Fall.

BILL EPPRIDGE EXHIBIT AT FAIRFIELD MUSEUM

IMAGES 2011: The 3rd Annual Fairfield Museum Photography Exhibition

Featuring a Retrospective of Award-Winning Photojournalist Bill Eppridge
May 1 to August 28, 2011


IMAGES is an annual juried photography exhibition hosted by the Fairfield Museum to celebrate the exceptional work of talented regional photographers. The exhibition provides an excellent opportunity for artists to connect with prominent collectors, gallery owners, fellow photographers and the public.


This year the Fairfield Museum will also feature a retrospective exhibition celebrating legendary photojournalist Bill Eppridge, whose storied career spans over fifty years. His iconic collection of work for magazines such as LIFE, National Geographic and Sports Illustrated captures many of the most important moments in American political and cultural history.

Preview Gala Tickets and Exhibit Programming here.

The Chaney family as they depart for the burial of James Chaney, Meridian, Mississippi, August 7, 1964.

Photograph © Bill Eppridge.
All rights reserved.

Top Ten Galleries Every Photographer Should Visit

April 27, 2011


Top Ten Galleries Every Photographer Should Visit

Via The Photo Life
Written by Rachel LaCour Niesen

Call me old school. Go ahead, it’s true. I love seeing photographs in galleries. Not the galleries confined to a computer. I’m talking about the ones with walls.

There’s just something magical about stepping into a gallery and approaching large photographs hanging around you. It’s like meeting a kindred spirit for the first time; by standing face-to-face, you have a chance to savor their subtle nuances, to get lost in the rich hues of their eyes. Above all, you feel comfortable exploring, discovering and learning.

Sometimes, my palms sweat as I walk into a favorite gallery and glimpse a new exhibit. Rounding the corner of Canal and Chartres in New Orleans, I instinctively look up, toward the worn wooden sign and bold red door marking the entrance to A Gallery for Fine Photography. It was the first real photography gallery I visited, when I was a high school student discovering my passion for photojournalism. When I’m in New Orleans, A Gallery is my first stop. The space always draws me in, like the magnetic force of first love.

When I view photographs in a gallery, I don’t just see them. I experience them. It’s like full immersion in another culture, and it can’t be matched by a computer.

For years, I’ve been visiting galleries, cataloging my favorites. Here are my must-see galleries for photographers. I hope you’ll have a chance to stop by each of them and get lost for awhile. Please share your favorite galleries in the comments section. I look forward to finding some new places to visit!

1. A Gallery for Fine Photography, New Orleans, LA

Located in an historic 19th-century building at 241 Chartres in New Orleans’ French Quarter, A Gallery houses a dazzling collection of historic photographs spanning the 19th and 20th centuries. Set up like a living room, or informal Parisian Salon, the gallery immediately makes visitors feel at ease. Poke around, walk upstairs, and stare at images of Ernest Hemingway and Louis Armstrong. The singular vision and unforgettable personality of gallery owner, Joshua Mann Pailet, are evident around every corner. That’s precisely why this space feels like home to me.

2. Monroe Gallery, Santa Fe, NM

 

Located just off the historic city center, The Plaza, the Monroe Gallery specializes in classic black-and-white photography with an emphasis on humanist and photojournalist imagery. From Robert Capa’s pioneering photojournalism to Joe McNally’s contemporary coverage of New York city firefighters, the Monroe gallery is a living, breathing archive of photojournalism. Plus, the owners are casual, friendly and willing to strike up a conversation about their passion for photography.


3. Polka Galerie, Paris, France

The Polka Galerie is located in my favorite Parisian neighborhood, The Marais, and is actually part of three outlets dedicated to photography. The physical space is supplemented by a beautiful, quarterly magazine and a website showcasing exhibits. The founder and owner of Polka is Alain Genestar, former editor-in-chief of Paris Match, which is one of the most powerful weekly magazines in the France and is renowed for its use of photographs.

4. Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, NY

Formerly a photographer and founder of The Center for Photography in Woodstock in 1977, Howard Greenberg is one of a small group of gallerists, curators and historians responsible for the creation and development of the modern market for photography. The Howard Greenberg Gallery, which was founded in 1981, was the first to consistently exhibit photojournalism and ‘street’ photography, which are now accepted as important components of photographic art.

5. International Center for Photography, New York, NY

Nestled in the heart of New York City, the International Center of Photography is dedicated to exploring the photographic medium through dynamic exhibitions of historical and contemporary work. More than a gallery, ICP is a haven for education and scholarship. ICP also holds the famed “Mexican Suitcase,” which comprises a rare collection of rediscovered Spanish Civil War negatives by Capa, Chim, and Taro.

6. The George Eastman House, Rochester, NY

The world-renknowed George Eastman House combines the world’s leading collections of photography and film with the stately style of the Colonial Revival mansion that George Eastman called home from 1905 to 1932. This is the world’s oldest photography museum and one of the world’s oldest film archives, which originally opened to the public in 1949.

7. Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

The Fahey/Klein Gallery is devoted to the enhancement of the public’s appreciation of photography through the exhibition and sale of 20th Century and Contemporary Fine Art Photography. Since the gallery’s inception, exhibitions have embraced a diverse range photographers from Edward Weston to Berenice Abbott; Man Ray to Henri Cartier-Bresson.

8. Robert Klein Gallery, Boston, MA

Founded in 1980, the Robert Klein Gallery is devoted exclusively to fine art photography. The gallery deals with established photographers of the 19th and 20th centuries including those who are considered masters such as: Muybridge, Berenice Abbott, Ansel Adams, Irving Penn, Brassai, Cartier Bresson, Helen Levitt, Yousuf Karsh, Man Ray, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston and Walker Evans. The exhibition schedule is also designed to introduce new photographers to the public. Recently exhibited contemporary artists include: Julie Blackmon, Bill Jacobson, Jeff Brouws, Cig Harvey, Laura Letinsky, Wendy Burton and Chip Hooper.

9. Photo Eye Gallery, Santa Fe, NM

If you’re into collecting photo books, especially rare and out-of-print volumes, don’t miss Photo Eye! Simply put, it’s a treasure trove of photo books. You’ll be consistently surprised every time you step into this gallery a few blocks off Canyon Road. Dealing in contemporary photography, the gallery represents both internationally renowned and emerging artists.

10. Peter Fetterman, Santa Monica, CA

Peter Fetterman set up his first gallery over 20 years ago. He was a pioneer tenant of Bergamot Station, the Santa Monica Center of the Arts, when it opened in 1994. His gallery has one of the largest inventories of classic 20th Century photography. Diverse holdings include work by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Sebastião Salgado, Ansel Adams, Paul Caponigro, Willy Ronis, and André Kerstez. Peter and his colleagues are committed to promote awareness and appreciation of photography in an intimate, user-friendly environment.


Link to article and comments here.

MOMENTS OF OUR TIME

Via wayneford's posterous

Notes and thoughts on the photography that I am looking at...
April 27, 2011


 Moments of Our Time: Photographs that Define Modern History

 

Above Execution in Saigon, 1968. (©AP Eddie Adams/Courtesy of Monroe Gallery).


Over the past 100 years, the photograph has formed an important part of both our social and cultural history, with many images becoming icons of our time and often forming the the impetus to set political social changes in motion. Moments of Our Time at London’s Atlas Gallery brings many of these key images together, in what could be considered a sequel to the 2010 exhibition, Faces of Our Time.


Amongst the exhibitions many recognisable photographs, are Robert Capa’s (1913-1954) D-Day, Omaha Beach, Normandy, 6th June 1944, an image that places us, the viewer, at the very heart of the action, as the soldiers struggle to reach the beachhead through a raging surf, whilst under the threat of enemy fire, a photograph that clearly reflects Capa’s credo, ‘...if your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough.’

Whilst American Joe Rosenthal (1911-2006), received a Pulitzer Prize for his iconic photograph Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, taken in 1945, five days after the U.S. Marine corp landed on Iwo Jima. When asked about the photograph later in life, Rosenthal replied, ‘I took the picture, the Marines took Iwo Jima.’

Above U.S. Marines of the 28th Regiment, 5th Division, raise the American flag atop Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima, on Friday, Feb. 23, 1945. (©Joe Rosenthal/AP Photo/Courtesy of Monroe Gallery).


And several decades later it was a different war that took centre stage. On 2 February 1968, Eddie Adams' (1933-2004) photograph Execution in Saigon, South Vietnam, appeared on the front page of The New York Times (and syndicated around the world), a day after South Vietnam’s chief of police, Nguyen Ngoc Loan, executed a suspected Viet Cong collaborator. Just seconds before this man looses his life, we are presented with the fear in his eyes, and with the photographs publication, public opinion turned against the Vietnam War, reflecting the power of the photograph.

The attack on the World Trade Centre in 2001, was captured by Magnum photographer, Thomas Hoepker. His Twin Towers, Brooklyn, NYC, 9/11, 2001, depicts an almost idyllic scene, with a group of young people sitting and chatting in the late afternoon summer sunshine, as smoke billows from the ground zero, raising questions over about onlookers reactions to the scenes unravelling before their very eyes.

Whilst many of the images in this exhibition are by notable photographers, such as Capa, Rosenthal, Adams, and Hoepker, and others including, Ian Berry, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Elliott Erwitt, Stuart Franklin, Leonard Freed, Burt Glinn, Yevgeny Khaldei, Alberto Korda, Josef Koudelka, Don McCullin, Mark Power, Marc Riboud, W. Eugene Smith, Nick Ut, and Abraham Zapruder, works by authors who remain unknown, but whose images are no less poignant are also included.

On the 6 August 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki, the second such attack on the country. This now iconic image of the attack, depicting what The Times described as a ‘huge mushroom of smoke and dust,’ has become one of the most powerful symbols of the anti-war movement. Whilst the ethereal, almost cinematic image of President John F. Kennedy slumped in the back of his presidential car, and cradled in the arms of Jackie Kennedy, which has been utilised in artworks by contemporary artists Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg, is etched on our shared memory of this tragic event.

These photographs, and others in Moments of Our Time, are rarely easy to look at, but are powerful markers of history over the last 100 years, and represent the important place the photograph holds in informing, and setting in motion social and political change.



Moments of Our Time is at the Atlas Gallery, London, until 28 May 2011.


(Monroe Gallery of Photography is pleased to have provided several key photographs to this exhibition.)

44 YEARS AGO: MUHAMMAD ALI STRIPPED OF HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP

Bon Gomel: Heavyweight boxer Cassius Clay, aka Muhammad Ali, posing outside the Alvin theater where "The Great White Hope" is playing, New York, 1968

Clay Refuses Army Oath; Stripped of Boxing Crown

The New York Times
By ROBERT LIPSYTE


Houston, April 28 (1967)--Cassius Clay refused today, as expected, to take the one step forward that would have constituted induction into the armed forces. There was no immediate Government action.

Although Government authorities here foresaw several months of preliminary moves before Clay would be arrested and charged with a felony, boxing organizations instantly stripped the 25-year- old fighter of his world heavyweight championship.

"It will take at least 30 days for Clay to be indicted and it probably will be another year and a half before he could be sent to prison since there undoubtedly will be appeals through the courts," United States Attorney Morton Susman said.

Statement Is Issued

Clay, in a statement distributed a few minutes after the announcement of his refusal, said:
"I have searched my conscience and I find I cannot be true to my belief in my religion by accepting such a call." He has maintained throughout recent unsuccessful civil litigation that he is entitled to draft exemption as an appointed minister of the Lost-Found Nation of Islam, the so- called Black Muslim sect.

Clay, who prefers his Muslim name of Muhammad Ali, anticipated the moves against his title in his statement, calling them a "continuation of the same artificially induced prejudice and discrimination" that had led to the defeat of his various suits and appeals in Federal courts, including the Supreme Court.

Hayden C. Covington of New York, Clay's lawyer, said that further civil action to stay criminal proceedings would be initiated. If convicted of refusal to submit to induction, Clay is subject to a maximum sentence of five years imprisonment and a $10,000 fine.

Mr. Covington, who has defended many Jehovah's Witnesses in similar cases, has repeatedly told Clay during the last few days, "You'll be unhappy in the fiery furnace of criminal proceedings but you'll come out unsinged."

As a plaintiff in civil action, the Negro fighter has touched on such politically and socially explosive areas as alleged racial imbalance on local Texas draft boards, alleged discriminatory action by the Government in response to public pressure, and the rights of a minority religion to appoint clergymen.

Full-Time Occupation

As a prospective defendant in criminal proceedings, Clay is expected to attempt to establish that "preaching and teaching" the tenets of the Muslims is a full-time occupation and that boxing is the "avocation" that financially supports his unpaid ministerial duties.

Today, Clay reported to the Armed Forces Examining and Entrance Station on the third floor of the Federally drab United States Custom House a few minutes before 8 A.M., the ordered time. San Jacinto Street, in downtown Houston, was already crowded with television crews and newsmen when Clay stepped out of a taxi cab with Covington, Quinnan Hodges, the local associate counsel, and Chauncey Eskridge of Chicago, a lawyer for the Rev. Martin Luther King, as well as for Clay and others.

Half a dozen Negro men, apparently en route to work, applauded Clay and shouted: "He gets more publicity than Johnson." Clay was quickly taken upstairs and disappeared into the maw of the induction procedure for more than five hours.

Two information officers supplied a stream of printed and oral releases throughout the procedure, including a detailed schedule of examinations and records processing, as well as instant confirmation of Clay's acceptable blood test and the fact that he had obeyed Muslim dietary strictures by passing up the ham sandwich included in the inductees' box lunches.

Such information, however, did not forestall the instigation, by television crews, of a small demonstration outside the Custom House. During the morning, five white youngsters from the Friends World Institute, a nonaccredited school in Westbury, L.I., who had driven all night from a study project in Oklahoma, and half a dozen local Negro youths, several wearing Black Power buttons, had appeared on the street.

Groups Use Signs

Continuous and sometimes insulting interviewers eventually provoked both groups, separately, to appear with signs. The white group merely asked for the end of the Vietnam war and greater efforts for civil rights.

The Negro eventually swelled into a group of about two dozen circling pickets carrying hastily scrawled, "Burn, Baby, Burn" signs and singing, "Nothing kills a nigger like too much love." A few of the pickets wore discarded bedsheets and table linen wound into African-type garments, but most were young women dragged into the little demonstration on their lunch hours.

There was a touch of sadness and gross exaggeration throughout the most widely observed noninduction in history. At breakfast this morning in the Hotel America, Clay had stared out a window into a dingy, cold morning and said: "Every time I fight it gets cold and rainy. Then dingy and cool, no sun in sight nowhere."

He had shrugged when Mr. Hodges had showed him an anonymously sent newspaper clipping in which a photograph of the local associate counsel had been marked "Houston's great nigger lawyer."

Sadly, too, 22-year-old John McCullough, a graduate of Sam Houston State College, said: "It's his prerogative if he's sincere in his religion, but it's his duty as a citizen to go in. I'm a coward, too."

46 Called to Report

Then Mr. McCullough, who is white, went up the steps to be inducted. He was one of the 46 young men, including Clay, who were called to report on this day.

For Clay, the day ended at 1:10 P.M. Houston time, when Lieut. Col. J. Edwin McKee, commander of the station, announced that "Mr. Muhammad Ali has just refused to be inducted."

In a prepared statement, Colonel McKee said that notification of the refusal would be forwarded to the United States Attorney General's office, and the national and local Selective Service boards. This is the first administrative step toward possible arrest, and an injunction to stop it had been denied to Clay yesterday in the United States District Court here.

Clay was initially registered for the draft in Louisville, where he was born. He obtained a transfer to a Houston board because his ministerial duties had made this city his new official residence. He had spent most of his time until last summer in Chicago, where the Muslin headquarters are situated, in Miami, where he trained, or in the cities in which he was fighting.

After Colonel McKee's brief statement, Clay was brought into a pressroom and led into range of 13 television cameras and several dozen microphones. He refused to speak as he handed out Xeroxed copies of his statement to selected newsmen, including representatives of the major networks, wire services and The New York Times.

The statement thanked those instrumental in his boxing career as well as those who have offered support and guidance, including Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Muslims; Mohammed Oweida, Secretary General of the High Council for Islamic Affairs, and Floyd McKissick, president of the Congress of Racial Equality.

The statement, in part, declared:

"It is in the light of my consciousness as a Muslim minister and my own personal convictions that I take my stand in rejecting the call to be inducted in the armed services. I do so with the full realization of its implications and possible consequences. I have searched my conscience and I find I cannot be true to my belief in my religion by accepting such a call.

"My decision is a private and individual one and I realize that this is a most crucial decision. In taking it I am dependent solely upon Allah as the final judge of these actions brought about by my own conscience.

"I strongly object to the fact that so many newspapers have given the American public and the world the impression that I have only two alternatives in taking this stand: either I go to jail or go to the Army. There is another alternative and that alternative is justice. If justice prevails, if my Constitutional rights are upheld, I will be forced to go neither to the Army nor jail. In the end I am confident that justice will come my way for the truth must eventually prevail.

"I am looking forward to immediately continuing my profession.

"As to the threat voiced by certain elements to 'strip' me of my title, this is merely a continuation of the same artificially induced prejudice and discrimination.

"Regardless of the difference in my outlook, I insist upon my right to pursue my livelihood in accordance with the same rights granted to other men and women who have disagreed with the policies of whatever Administration was in power at the time.

"I have the world heavyweight title not because it was 'given' to me, not because of my race or religion, but because I won it in the ring through my own boxing ability.

"Those who want to 'take' it and hold a series of auction-type bouts not only do me a disservice but actually disgrace themselves. I am certain that the sports fans and fair-minded people throughout America would never accept such a 'title-holder.'"

Clay returned to his hotel and went to sleep after the day's activities. He is expected to leave the city, possibly for Washington, in the morning.

Elvis Presley and Muhammad Ali Photographs Tell Stories of Two American Icons

Andrew Berg, 12, of Souderton, Pa., views photographs of Muhammad Ali by Neil Leifer, right, and an anonymous photographer, left, at the James A. Michener Museum in Doylestown, Pa. Two American superstars have crossed paths in suburban Philadelphia at the museum, where a pair of photography exhibits called American Icons offers a peek into the lives of Elvis Presley and Muhammad Ali. AP Photo/Matt Rourke.

Via artdaily.org

By: Kathy Matheson, Associated Press


DOYLESTOWN, PA (AP).- In a culture saturated with celebrity magazines, paparazzi and red carpets, it's hard to imagine capturing an image of a young Elvis Presley alone on the sidewalk in New York. Or a picture of Muhammad Ali at play with neighborhood kids in a parking lot.

No screaming fans, no camera flashes, no entourages.

These unguarded moments are among dozens featured in "Ali and Elvis: American Icons," a pair of photography exhibits sharing gallery space through May 15 at the James A. Michener Museum in Doylestown, Pa., about 25 miles north of Philadelphia. This is the first time the exhibits have been displayed together.

The Smithsonian-curated "Elvis at 21" show offers a glimpse into Presley's life just as his star begins to rise. Needing publicity photos, Presley's record company hired photographer Alfred Wertheimer in 1956 to shadow the rock-n-roll prince who would become The King.

Wertheimer had extraordinary access, said Smithsonian project director Marquette Folley.

"After this year, 1956, no one can ever get this close again," Folley said. "The walls go up."

The images of Ali, taken by multiple photographers, chronicle his years from teen boxer to his reign as The Greatest to a beloved figure battling Parkinson's disease. They were first displayed at a Hofstra University symposium on Ali in 2008.

Putting the exhibits together was simply an effort to take a broader look at the concepts of fame and the making of icons, said Brian Peterson, chief curator at the Michener Museum.

Certainly the two superstars had similarities. Both sons of the South, Presley and Ali enjoyed worldwide popularity but also alarmed some people with their swagger and attitude — Elvis with his thrusting pelvis and use of African-American rhythms in his music, Ali with his braggadocio and conversion to Islam.

Wertheimer's 56 images — most enlarged to 3-by-4-foot prints — capture Presley's electrifying stage persona but also his more intimate moments: standing in solitude in front of New York's Warwick Hotel; sprawling on a couch reading fan mail; and interacting with his family.

Wertheimer also chronicles one summer week that found the American idol rehearsing alone at a piano for an appearance on Steve Allen's show in New York, kissing a giddy fan backstage in Richmond, Va., and splashing in his swimming pool at home in Memphis, Tenn.

"I was basically putting Elvis under my microscope," Wertheimer, now 81, told The Associated Press. "He permitted closeness."

The bulk of "Muhammad Ali: The Making of an Icon" features shots of the heavyweight champ in and around the ring: training in Miami; absorbing blows from George Foreman in Zaire; and looming over a floored Sonny Liston in Neil Leifer's famous frame from 1965.

But the exhibit starts with less familiar and more personal images from when Ali was known as Cassius Clay — shadowboxing with his family, preening in front of a mirror and riding a bike with adoring local children. It ends with pictures of Ali the celebrity and humanitarian, lighting the Olympic torch in Atlanta and receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Curator Hava Gurevich said the power of the 50-image show lies in its combination of fine art, documentary and news photography.

"It's like a kaleidoscopic view of Muhammad Ali's life," Gurevich said.

Peterson, the Michener curator, said he didn't find out until after booking them that Presley and Ali had actually crossed paths. Elvis visited Ali's training camp in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains and gave him a rhinestone cape; Ali gave The King an autographed pair of gold boxing gloves.

"I can't say it was part of our grand plan," Peterson said. "(But) it made us feel we were kind of on the right track."

The next stop for "Elvis at 21" is the William J. Clinton museum in Little Rock, Ark. The next stop for "Muhammad Ali: The Making of an Icon" is the Historic City Hall Arts & Cultural Center in Lake Charles, La.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press

Memorials Planned for Photographers Chris Hondros and Tim Hetherington

Via Photo District News





Memorials Planned for Photographers Chris Hondros and Tim Hetherington


The families of two photojournalists killed in a rocket attack on Misrata, Libya, on April 20 are organizing memorials.

Dean Hondros, brother of photographer Chris Hondros, announced that a memorial service will take place Wednesday, April 27, at 1 pm at Sacred Hearts St. Stephens Church in Brooklyn. Directions and information are available on the church’s Web site, http://www.delvecchiorc.com/; the phone number is (718) 246-8342.

In lieu of flowers, Hondros’s family and fiancee have suggested donations be made to The Chris Hondros Fund, which has just been launched: “This fund will provide scholarships for aspiring photojournalists and raise awareness of issues surrounding conflict photography.”

The Chris Hondros Fund
c/o Christina Piaia
50 Bridge Street #414
Brooklyn, New York 11201

The family of Tim Hetherington have created a web page, Timhetherington.org/condolences, where remembrances of their son are being posted. On the site, a note from Alistair and Judith Hetherington says, “We will be setting up a charitable organization to continue Tim’s humanitarian work around the world,” and adds, “Information will be posted here in the coming days.

Editor and Writer David Schonauer on the Risky History of the War Photographer

David Schonauer
Former editor-in-chief, American Photo magazine


Via The Huffington Post
Hetherington, Hondros, and the Risky History of the War Photographer



To the list of photographers who have died while covering war and conflict, we must now add the names of Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros, killed in Misurata, Libya on Wednesday. They join the likes of Ken Oosterbroek, a member of the so-called Bang Bang Club of photojournalists immortalized now in a new movie. Oosterbroek was killed in 1994 while covering the violence in South Africa during the final days of apartheid. They join Olivier Rebbot, killed in El Salvador in 1981 while on assignment for Newsweek. Rebbot was a model for the photographer played by Nick Nolte in the 1983 film Under Fire. They join Robert Capa, killed near Thai Binh, Vietnam in 1954, who was the model for all who would follow in his profession. If the war photographer has come to be seen as a romantic figure, we have the Hemingwayesque Capa to thank.


It was Capa, famed for covering the D-Day landing on Omaha Beach, who said, "If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough," and the photographers who followed him into Vietnam took his advice. Vietnam was a particular deadly place for photographers, who jumped aboard helicopters alongside soldiers to fly into firefights. The names of the dead -- Larry Burrows, Gilles Caron, Henri Huet, Robert Ellison, Dickie Chapelle, Charles Eggleston, and Oliver Noonan among them -- have become legend. The haunting 1997 book Requiem memorialized these journalists -- 135 photographers from different nations known to have died in Vietnam. In the book's introduction, David Halberstam described why their job was so dangerous:

"War correspondents always know who is real and who is not. A war zone is not a good setting for the inauthentic of spirit and heart. We who were print people and who dealt only in words and not in images always knew that the photographers were the brave ones, and in that war... they held a special place in our esteem. We deferred to them, reporter to photographer, in that venue as we did in few others."

They were real because they had to be real; they could not, as we print people could, arrive a little late for the action, be briefed, and then, through the skilled use of interviews and journalism, re-create a scene with stunning accuracy, writing a marvelous you-are-there story that reeked of intimacy even though, in truth, we had missed it all. We could miss the fighting and still do our jobs. They could not. There was only one way for them to achieve intimacy: by being eyewitnesses.

I knew Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros, but not especially well -- in the case of Chris, we went out for beers on a couple of occasions and spoke on the telephone a few times when he wrote a story for the photography magazine I edited. (He was a fine writer, too; urgent, clear, and caring.) My acquaintance with Tim was very brief -- I interviewed him last November, over coffee at a hotel lobby in New York, about his book Infidel, which had just come out. In similar ways, Chris and Tim impressed me, immediately and lastingly, as superior people -- humble, humorous, dedicated, and very intelligent. Real, as Halberstam put it.

Halberstam noted that the Vietnam War began "in an era of black-and-white photography and ended in one of color videotape beamed by satellite to television stations all over the world." The world of photography has changed just as radically in the past ten years. On 9/11, when photographers raced to downtown Manhattan to document the devastating scenes there, most carried film cameras. At the time, the first professional-quality 35mm SLRs were just coming onto the market. News organizations and photo agencies anticipated America's reaction to the terrorist attacks and retooled, almost overnight. When American troops went to war in Afghanistan a few weeks later, photojournalists covered the story with digital cameras and satellite uplinks, ramping up the speed with which they could deliver pictures. Later in the decade, as the Internet took hold and the old-media world imploded, photographers began doubling as videographers and writers. (Underscoring the evolution, last year the Associated Press dropped its time-honored byline, "Associated Press Writer," with the more ambiguous "Associated Press.")

Tim Hetherington thrived in this new journalistic landscape. A skilled filmmaker as well as a photographer, he could tell a story through a number of media platforms. In his Oscar-nominated film Restrepo, and in his small but powerful photo book Infidel, he told the story of a U.S. combat unit in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley, never veering far from the everyday reality of the soldiers' lives. "Symbols or representations of soldiers are often claimed by the far left and far right to mean a certain thing," he told me, "and we do these men an injustice by not digesting fully their reality."

An image from Hetherington's book Infidel

It's a dangerous job they do, and like others who do dangerous jobs they learn how to cope as best they can. A correspondent friend of mine who traveled with Chris Hondros on several stories in Iraq later told me that the photographer had taught him a valuable lesson about working in a combat area: to sleep when sleep was possible, in the lulls between action and danger. Chris, a recipient of the Robert Capa Gold Medal, a prestigious award for the highest level of war photography, knew what he was doing and why. And he no doubt understood the implications of another of Capa's famous comments: speaking of his work on D-Day, Capa said, "The war correspondent has his stake, his life, in his own hands and he can put it on this horse or that horse, or he can put it back in his pocket at the very last minute. I am a gambler. I decided to go in with Company E in the first wave."


Please take a moment to write a message to Tim Hetherington's family and share it with his friends

'Images' exhibit features photo icon's work

Bill Eppridge: Bobby Kennedy campaigns in IN during May of 1968, with various aides and friends: former prizefighter Tony Zale and (right of Kennedy) N.F.L. stars Lamar Lundy, Rosey Grier, and Deacon Jones

The Westport News
Friday, April 22, 2011

A retrospective of photojournalist Bill Eppridge's work will headline "Images 2011," the Fairfield Museum and History Center's third annual photography exhibit.


The show opens May 1 and continues through the end of August. A preview party is scheduled April 30.

Eppridge worked for Life magazine in the 1960s and took many of the decade's notable photographs -- the Beatles arriving in the United States for their appearance on the "Ed Sullivan Show," Barbra Streisand in Paris, the Woodstock Festival, the civil rights movement, the 50th anniversary of the Soviet revolution, the Vietnam War and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 presidential candidacy.

Kennedy befriended the photographer during the campaign. One of Eppridge's best-known photos is of busboy Juan Romero cradling the fatally wounded candidate in the seconds after he was shot in the kitchen of a Los Angeles restaurant after the California primary.

In addition to Eppridge's photos, the museum said, "Images 2011" will include a juried exhibit of more than 50 photographs by professional, amateur and student photographers from the region.

The juried show attracted entries from about 400 photographers from Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. A panel of six photographers, including Eppridge, selected works in six categories for exhibit.

The museum has also developed a range of related programs in conjunction with the exhibition. These programs, focusing on the challenges, rewards and ethics of visually documenting history, news and events, at home and abroad, will be open to members, nonmembers and students.

At the April 30 preview party, guests will have an opportunity to meet Eppridge, a New Milford resident, along with collectors, gallery owners and patrons. Tickets for the reception may be purchased in advance and are priced at $100, 200 and $500. Proceeds from the preview benefit the museum's education programs.

To purchase tickets to the preview party and for information on the exhibit-related programs, call 203-259-1598 or visit the museum's website, http://www.fairfieldhs.org/.


Related: Bill Eppridge: An American Treasure