White House Photographer Eric Draper on New York Times Lens Blog

Eric Draper: Oval Office, January 26, 2001

Photo Editors Who Made a Difference

"Today and tomorrow on Lens, photographers recall and pay tribute to the photo editors who most influenced their careers. The people who pushed, pulled and occasionally strong-armed them into producing exceptional work. The people who believed in them when nobody else did — who recognized the photographer’s strength and took the time to develop it."

 

By YUNGHI KIM and KENNETH JARECKE

Via The New York Times Lens Blog, full post here.

Eric Draper

"Mike Davis hired me to work for the Scripps Howard afternoon daily, The Albuquerque Tribune, in 1990. It was my third newspaper job since college and my first real photo editor. I learned more from Mike in two and a half years than I did in my entire early career. Every photo editing session with him was an intense experience. We would sit at the light table and Mike would look at the images, just breathing in and out, and without small talk. He taught me to shoot strong photo stories. I learned layout and design. And with Mike, no assignment was too small to learn something important.

In 1992, he handed me my most challenging assignment ever up to that point. While watching my hometown of Los Angeles burn on television after the Rodney King verdict, Mike called to send me “back to L.A. to tell a personal photo story.” It worked. We produced a 12-page special section called “Seeing Through the Flames.” It was a profound experience, and I also won Scripps Howard Newspaper Photographer of the Year.

In 2001, I became the chief White House photographer for President George W. Bush. I didn’t skip a beat in asking Mike to join the team as my photo editor. We worked closely on the images of the events of 9/11, and we traveled the world with the 43rd president. Mike made me a better photographer in the president’s first term, and I am grateful. I will never forget what he told me during those early years in Albuquerque: “Never underestimate yourself.” I never did."

 

Tina Hager, courtesy of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and MuseumChief White House photographer Eric Draper, left, with his senior White House photo editor Mike Davis inside Draper’s West Wing office in 2003.

Magnificent Obsession: Robert De Niro on the Set of Raging Bull, Photos by Brian Hamill

Brian Hamill: De Niro, as LaMotta, screams aggressively, accusing his brother of sleeping

 with his wife.

Via Time LightBox

"If Robert De Niro never acted in any other movies besides those he’s made with his frequent director and collaborator, Martin Scorsese, he’d still be a film legend. Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The King of Comedy, Goodfellas — the list goes on and on. Add to those his performances in movies as diverse as The Deer Hunter, The Godfather: Part II, Midnight Run, Cop Land and Silver Linings Playbook, and the scope of the man’s accomplishments comes into formidable focus.

Here, on the occasion of De Niro’s 70th birthday — he was born Aug. 17, 1943, in New York City — TIME presents a fittingly iconic portfolio of pictures by photographer Brian Hamill, made on the set of Raging Bull in 1979. De Niro’s riveting and at-times harrowing portrayal of world middleweight boxing champ Jake LaMotta won him a Best Actor Oscar, and raised the bar for onscreen Method performances when the actor famously gained 60 pounds to play a bloated LaMotta late in life."

--Full post with slideshow here.

Cirque du Soleil pulls Tiananmen image from China shows after 'collective gasp'

Via South China Morning Post



 

Cirque du Soleil has removed a photo of the Tiananmen crackdown from its show in China after surprising an audience of 15,000 in Beijing with the iconic "tank man" image, which remains banned and highly controversial in the country. Full article here.

A photo of the show shared by a member of the audience. Photo: SCMP Pictures




Jeff Weidener/AP
A lone man stops a column of tanks near Tiananmen Square, 1989 Beijing, China

50th Anniversary of the March on Washington

 

©Steve Schapiro: Jackie Robinson, March on Washington, 1963

 

On August 28, 2013 citizens from across this country will converge upon our nation’s capital to commemorate and celebrate the historic March On Washington which occurred 50 years ago on August 28, 1963.

 

This site provides information and updates on the numerous commemorative marches that are being planned throughout this country. In addition, this site provides citizens an opportunity to leave their remembrances and pictures of the march that changed the world.

 

Full details here.

 

 

 

Related: 

 TIME:  “One Dream” — a multimedia commemoration of the 1963 March on Washington and the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech

Exhibit: 1963

50th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham

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

Bob Gomel: Black Muslim leader Malcolm X photographing Cassius Clay, Miami, 1964    

This morning National Public Radio did a piece on a new play, "One Night in Miami",  the premise of which is that no one knows where Malcolm X and Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) went after the February, 1964 fight in Miami

WE DO!

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

 

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

 

"Breaking Bad's" creator, Vince Gilligan, talks about shooting the show in New Mexico, and exploring sights in the state

 

Ernst Haas: Route 66, Albuquerque, 1969

Via The New York Times
Sunday, August 11, 2013


"And in Albuquerque itself, what’s of interest?

I’ll admit that when you enter the city on either Interstate, 40 or 25 — they meet smack in the middle — Albuquerque doesn’t look, shall we say, particularly picturesque. It seems like lots of strip malls and chain restaurants. But it has a stealth charm. Once you get into the neighborhoods, you realize it possesses a great amount of culture and history and natural beauty surrounding it.

      

Central Avenue is a great drive. A part of Route 66, it’s still dotted with old neon motel signs like that great Ernst Haas photo. There’s a great art gallery called Mariposa Gallery and a restaurant we love called Zinc.

      

The Sandias, the mountains to the east, are omnipresent. Take the cable car up to a restaurant called High Finance, which is a good place to eat. It’s stark beauty up there; you can see for hundreds of miles."      

Stephen Wilkes' Day To Night Series Featured in Today's Newspapers

Via New York Daily News

Stunning! Timelapse photographs show city skylines in daytime and at night... all at the same time

Cities such as New York City and Shanghai get captured in unique images which show the glorious daylight and the glimmering night time lights.

CATERS NEWS
Wednesday, August 7, 2013, 7:21 AM

New York City’s Central Park during the day and at night.

Stephen Wilkes/Caters News Agency

 

These are the incredible images which show the world’s most iconic cityscapes by day and night — in just one picture.

The mesmerising images show the beautiful transition from day to night in some of the world’s most iconic cities from the Shanghai skyline to New York’s Central Park.

The unusual images were taken by photographer Stephen Wilkes who spent up to 15 hours and shot up to 1500 photos to create just one composite image.

 

Stephen Wilkes/Caters News Agency

Brooklyn’s Coney Island.

 

The collection entitled Day to Night features 15 images including works from Times Square, The Western Wall and The Capitol.

To create the images, Stephen, 55, from Connecticut, U.S.A., shoots across the entire landscape from sunrise to sunset — sometimes from locations that do not even have toilet facilities.

He then returns to his studio to blend around 50 of the best photographs to create one seamless image. Each piece takes around one month to edit.

Stephen Wilkes/Caters News Agency
Shanghai in day and night.

 

Stephen said he first came up with the idea of shooting multiple images across a landscape when taking the cast picture for Baz Lurman’s blockbuster Romeo and Juliet for Life Magazine, in 1996.
But it wasn’t until he was asked to shoot the High Line for New York Magazine that Stephen used this technique to show the passing of time.

Stephen said while he is fascinated by architecture, people and the cities of the world, what he really loves to shoot is history. And he has even shot Day and Night images of President Obama’s inauguration speech as well as New Year’s Eve in Times Square.

Stephen Wilkes/Caters News Agency
The Flatiron building in Manhattan.

 

There are currently 15 images in the collection but he is currently working on images from Chicago, and hope to add works from London and Paris in the near future.

Stephen wants to add as many images as possible to his collection.

He said: “I remember saying that New York was very active and busy at lunchtime and very spooky at night.

Stephen Wilkes/Caters News Agency

Capitol Hill shown in the day and at night.

 

“I like to say it’s a labour of love for you to stay 15 hours and shoot 1500 images where most of the time there is no bathroom.

“I am a street photographer by training and Day to Night is essentially all the things I love about photography; my son describes it as my symphony.

“The images are so layered; there are so many elements that I love about the medium: Street, history, people environment, narrative, and storytelling.

Stephen Wilkes/Caters News Agency

The Western Wall in Jerusalem.

 

“I’m drawn to cities that have not only fantastic architecture, but also fascinating street life.
“The human narrative is the subtext is in a lot of my photographs, so more you look at it, the more you are going to discover.

“There is a layered effect so you will discover something new whenever you view it.”

Related:

The Telegraph: Day-to-night in the city: Stephen Wilkes documents a day in one photograph

Stephen Wilkes DAY TO NIGHT  Feature On CBS News Sunday Morning Show

Huffington Post: Day To Night In The World's Most Iconic Cities

The Daily Mail: A day in the life of the city: Mesmerising photographs capture 24 hours in just one picture

Jeff Widener shares his experience in documenting a war-torn African nation after entering the country with a humanitarian visa

Via PetaPixel
Jeff Widener · Aug 02, 2013

My Journey to Angola

 

Africa started tugging on me again last year and when an opportunity to join an NGO to Angola surfaced, I quickly seized the opportunity. Non-government agencies like the Red Cross and Amnesty International offer a way for photojournalists to see parts of the world completely closed off to the average traveler. The Chicago based RISE International, a non profit organization that builds schools in Angola allowed me to join them in July to document their work. Full article and photographs here.

Jeff Widener is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated American photojournalist who’s best known for shooting the photo “Tank Man“. He has documented wars and social issues in over 100 countries, and was the first photojournalist to send digital photos from the South Pole. You can read our recent interview with him here.

Heroin and The Photo Essay

"Live Through This: Documenting One Woman’s Struggle with Heroin" photo essay is featured on today's TIME LightBox.  Tony Fouhse's powerful new book captures a young woman's recovery from addition, as well as an unconventional relationship between subject and documentary photographer. In the accompanying article, Paul Moakley notes:

"Photography has witnessed other, now-classic depictions of junkies, like Bill Eppridge’s “John and Karen, Two Lives Lost to Heroin,” published in LIFE in 1965, and Larry Clark’s landmark Tulsa (1971), in which the photographer’s portraits of his friends — and himself — formed a poignant picture of lost American youth."


Bill Eppridge's incredibly vivid and moving photo essay was published in Life Magazine in 1965:

Needle Park: Karen shooting up, New York City

©Bill Eppridge

"With "Needle Park," Bill gave us one of the most powerful and memorable photographic essays Life ever published, one still highly regarded today. The story was to run in two parts, the first focusing on an addicted couple to give the nation's narcotics problem a human face, the second to explain what was being done to treat it.

Research to find the ideal subjects for the story was almost as intense as the actual shooting. Weeks spent with the detectives of New York City's Narcotics Bureau were followed by months of "hanging out" in "Needle Park," on the street corners where connections were made, and in the fleabag hotels where the heroin was shot up. That the couple, Karen and John, were white was deliberate; it was not to be a race story.

Trust, between subject, photographer and magazine, was essential. It helped that Life had a reputation for being respectful and fair. Of Karen and John, writer Jim Mills found that "intellectually, they committed themselves very quickly, but the emotion okay came gradually over a period of weeks."

Bill and Jim earned that "okay" by living the addicts' life. Bill blended into the scenery, his presence often forgotten, his photographs taken with available light – he may have missed a few, but he probably gained much more. So convincing was Bill that he was picked up by the cops who thought that he had stolen his cameras and Life credentials. He also had some explaining to do to many of the magazine's readers who believed that the photographs were too real; they must have been faked.

The story complete, Bill, Jim and Life did what they could to find for Karen and John long-term care by a psychiatrist who specialized in drug addiction. The sensitivity that was necessary for Bill to photograph them assured that he would remain interested, but it isn't easy to keep track of addicts battling a devastating habit. And caring – about a subject, about your pictures – takes a toll.

In fact, Bill worries all the time: "They'll pay you for one day's worth of work," he says, "but it's usually about three. One to worry, one to shoot and then, one to recover."

-- Barbara Baker Burrows, The Digital Journalist

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Article by James Mills and photos by Bill Eppridge for Life Magazine, February 26, 1965.

 

The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum invites anyone enthusiastic about photography and art to enter the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Photography Contest

The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Announces 2013 Photography Competition and Landscape Theme

Amateur and professional photographers invited to submit original landscape-themed photos for second annual photography competition. Winners to receive photo publication, cash awards, and more.

Santa Fe, New Mexico (via PRWEB) July 26, 2013

 

"The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum is excited to invite photographers to submit their favorite images of landscapes,” said Robert A. Kret, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum director."

 

The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum is pleased to announce the second annual photography competition for 2013. To celebrate O’Keeffe’s enduring artistic legacy, this year’s theme honors landscapes, one of O’Keeffe’s most iconic and beloved subjects. Both amateur and professional photographers—located regionally, nationally, and internationally—are encouraged to submit their original images for a chance to win prizes and to be recognized for their talents.

The subject of her most iconic and important works, Georgia O’Keeffe depicted landscape configurations throughout her life, as if doing so put her in closer touch with the identity of a particular place. Of her time in Texas, O’Keeffe wrote to a friend saying, “I love the plains more than ever it seems – and the SKY – … you have never seen SKY – it is wonderful.” And of the beloved landscape of her future home in New Mexico, O’Keeffe explained, “When I got to New Mexico that was mine. As soon as I saw it, that was my country. I’d never seen anything like it before, but it fitted to me exactly. It’s something that’s in the air, it’s different. The sky is different, the wind is different.”

"The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum is excited to invite photographers to submit their favorite images of landscapes,” said Robert A. Kret, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum director. “It is an honor to reward their talent and creativity as a tribute to our namesake, Georgia O'Keeffe."

First, second and third place winners will be awarded in the adult category for entrants aged 21 years and older. The photography competition will also include two student competitions, one for students 18-21 years of age and a second competition for students under 18 years old. The Museum will also announce 20 honorable mentions. Photos may be submitted any time between today and the final entry deadline on Thursday, November 14, 2013, the eve of Georgia O’Keeffe’s birthday. Entrants are encouraged to submit their photos before October 15, 2013 to take advantage of reduced early entry fees.

The theme of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum’s 2012 first annual photography competition was “flowers.” A total of 930 entrants from 17 countries submitted a grand total of 3,380 images. The winning photograph, “Dancing Tulips,” was submitted by Joanna Stoga of Wroclaw Poland; the remaining winners hailed from New Mexico.

JUDGES FOR THE 2013 PHOTOGRAPHY COMPETITION
Adult group judges: Jolene Hanson, director and curator of G2 Gallery; Eddie Soloway, photographer; and Amy Silverman, photo editor of Outside Magazine.
Student contest judge: Sarah Zurick, education and family programs manager of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.

WHAT THE WINNERS WILL RECEIVE:
All winning images will be published in the winter/spring issue of O’Keeffe Magazine and on the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum website beginning January 6, 2014 through May 1, 2014. Winners will receive the following awards and prizes:
1st Place Award

$500 cash-prize; a Santa Fe Photographic Workshops Intensive; a book of exhibition paintings and photographs titled O'Keeffe and New Mexico: A Sense of Place which includes essays by Barbara Buhler Lynes and by the well-known writers Lesley Poling-Kempes and Frederick W. Turner; a copy of Georgia O'Keeffe in New Mexico: Architecture, Katsinam, and the Land, an exhibition catalogue which reveals the little-known breadth of Georgia O'Keeffe's interest in northern New Mexico and illuminates her keen sensitivity and deep respect for the Native American and Hispano cultures of the region; and a select item from the O’Keeffe Museum Shop.

2nd Place Award
$300 cash-prize; a book of exhibition paintings and photographs titled O'Keeffe and New Mexico: A Sense of Place which includes essays by Barbara Buhler Lynes and by the well-known writers Lesley Poling-Kempes and Frederick W. Turner; a copy of Georgia O'Keeffe in New Mexico: Architecture, Katsinam, and the Land, an exhibition catalogue which reveals the little-known breadth of Georgia O'Keeffe's interest in northern New Mexico and illuminates her keen sensitivity and deep respect for the Native American and Hispano cultures of the region; and a select item from the O’Keeffe Museum Shop.

3rd Place Award
$200 cash-prize; a book of exhibition paintings and photographs titled O'Keeffe and New Mexico: A Sense of Place which includes essays by Barbara Buhler Lynes and by the well-known writers Lesley Poling-Kempes and Frederick W. Turner; a copy of Georgia O'Keeffe in New Mexico: Architecture, Katsinam, and the Land, an exhibition catalogue which reveals the little-known breadth of Georgia O'Keeffe's interest in northern New Mexico and illuminates her keen sensitivity and deep respect for the Native American and Hispano cultures of the region; and a select item from the O’Keeffe Museum Shop.

Student Awards
$100 cash-prize; a book of exhibition paintings and photographs entitled O'Keeffe and New Mexico: A Sense of Place which includes essays by Barbara Buhler Lynes and by the well-known writers Lesley Poling-Kempes and Frederick W. Turner; a copy of Georgia O'Keeffe in New Mexico: Architecture, Katsinam, and the Land, an exhibition catalogue which reveals the little-known breadth of Georgia O'Keeffe's interest in northern New Mexico and illuminates her keen sensitivity and deep respect for the Native American and Hispano cultures of the region; and a select item from the O’Keeffe Museum Shop.

Honorable Mentions
Photo submissions will be posted to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum website.
For More Information and for Contest Rules, Please Visit the Contest Website: http://www.okmphotocompetition.org

For press inquiries, contact:
Lisa Neal
JLH Media
575 635 5658
lisa(at)jlhmedia(dot)com
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ABOUT GEORGIA O’KEEFFE MUSEUM:
The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum is dedicated to the artistic legacy of Georgia O'Keeffe, her life, American modernism, and public engagement. The Museum's collections, historic properties, exhibitions, Research Center, publications, and education programs contribute to scholarly discourse and inspire diverse audiences. Located in Santa Fe, NM, the Museum’s collections, exhibits, research center, publications and education programs contribute to scholarly discourse and serve diverse audiences. The largest single repository of the artist’s work in the world, it is the only museum in the world dedicated to an internationally known American woman artist and is the most visited art museum in New Mexico