Saturday, November 22, 2014

Bob Gomel got closer than he wanted to JFK’s funeral


 Bob Gomel poses with one of the cameras he used while covering pop culture for Life magazine in the 60s Slide show here.


Via Houston Chronicle

EDITOR’S NOTE: Last year as the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy loomed, The Texican visited with noted photographer and Houston native Bob Gomel at his home in the Memorial area to talk about his career behind the lens. Gomel captured some of the most poignant images of the funeral of the slain president that the world would ever see. It was an especially sad assignment for Gomel, who once spent an afternoon with Kennedy watching football while he was on the campaign trail. With the 51st anniversary on Saturday, here’s a look back at that profile of Gomel, 81, who still keeps busy globetrotting with his trusty collection of cameras.

As a Life magazine photographer in the ’60s, Bob Gomel saw some of the most pivotal moments in pop culture history through the lens of his Nikon.

A hallway in his Memorial home is lined with crisp, perfectly matted and framed shots that he snapped of Muhammad Ali, Marilyn Monroe, The Beatles, Richard Nixon, and Dustin Hoffman. Each photo comes with a rich story from Gomel that leaves the listener with a perma-grin.
But it is Gomel’s most celebrated subject, President John F. Kennedy, that has brought him the most notoriety — and the most sadness. Capturing the funeral of a man he had grown personally close to was not in his plan.

There was an afternoon late in 1960 when then President-elect Kennedy, Gomel, and another photog spent a few rather normal hours together that he’ll always remember with great pride.
“Kennedy was working and living in a brownstone in Georgetown picking out his cabinet for his first term,” says Gomel, who was waiting to capture the first shots of newly appointed cabinet members. It was slow going some days. Men in suits would come in and out, with little or no word to the press.
“There was just two of us left outside on a cold, dreary Saturday afternoon, so Kennedy invited us inside to watch the Army-Navy football game,” he says. That other man was noted Washington news photog James Atherton, no slouch in his own right. Atherton passed away in 2011.

They went inside and TV trays were brought out. Kennedy, Gomel, Atherton, and some Kennedy staffers ate steak and baked potatoes and watched the game.

“The next thing I remember is Jim waking me up, telling me that Navy won and that I fell asleep on the president,” Gomel says. From then on Kennedy would always have fun with him about it.
Gomel’s photographic journey began at 11 years old, when he delivered groceries on his bicycle for one hot summer in the Bronx, making just enough cash for a Circoflex camera. It cost him $88 — not a small chunk of change in 1944 — but what he wanted more than anything was a camera of his own that didn’t belong to his parents. He wanted to explore the world with a lens, even if it was just the Bronx.

After graduating from New York University, a hitch as a Navy pilot during the tail-end of the Korean War only made him yearn for a life behind the lens even more.

Gomel left Life at the end of 1969 and opened up his own studio in Manhattan. He did commercial work for the likes of Audi, Shell, Pan Am, Volkswagen, and Merrill Lynch before heading to Houston in the late ’70s to to take part in the oil boom.

Now 80 years old, the Manhattan-born, Bronx-raised and proud Houstonian of nearly 40 years hasn’t slowed down a bit, and neither has his trigger finger. When I spoke with him on a sunny afternoon this week, he was giddily telling me about one of his upcoming, month-long photography trips to South India.

“Houston was so exciting at that time, there was so much going on,” he says. “You could work 8 days a week here.”

The hubbub surrounding the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Kennedy means that there are new documentaries, news packages, and online and print stories to resurrect old feelings. Men like Gomel that were on the front lines of history aren’t so cynical about the situation.

“What’s troubling me is the cockamamie work of people trying to capitalize on the anniversary with their assassination theories,” says Gomel. “I have to concur with a preponderance of analysts that Oswald acted alone.”

He was in New York when he found out about the assassination in Dallas. He showed up to work at the Life offices to find that everyone who was on staff was ordered to leave immediately for Washington.

“There was no time to even pack a toothbrush,” he says.

He got into Washington, D.C., on the morning of Nov. 23, just in time to arrive at the White House to see the president’s body being brought back home. From then on, Gomel was shooting everything in front of him.

The mood that week still makes him shudder. The stun in everyone’s eyes, the disbelief and shock was surreal.

“We hadn’t experienced anything like that in our lifetime; it was a series of shocks. It was more than we could comprehend at one time,” he says.

Couriers picked up film every hour to fly it back to New York to get it developed. Sleep was a rarity.
Gomel’s shot of Kennedy’s casket lying in state in the U.S. Capitol rotunda as thousands upon thousands filed in to pay their respects is haunting in its simplicity and scope. The blue hue came from some intervention from the man upstairs, he says. He had been down on the main floor but decided to explore the potential of the balcony above. He found a door that had access and he went up there.

“It was just the right time of day to capture a little bit of light coming through.”

He would shoot from nearly the same vantage point for President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s funeral in March 1969, but from much higher in the rotunda.

The graveside services for Kennedy at Arlington National Cemetery on Nov. 25 featured dozens of heads of state from around the world. There was Charles de Gaulle, Haile Selassie I, Chancellor Ludwig Wilhelm Erhard, and Gomel, somehow right in the mix. He wasn’t exactly supposed to be that close to the world’s leaders.

“I learned only recently at a Life magazine reunion that we didn’t even have credentials for Arlington National Cemetery,” he laughs.

The Life staff had rented a limousine for the funeral and were accidentally put into the official motorcade with all the heads of state.

“I had a front row seat,” Gomel says. His photo, with de Gaulle solemnly saluting the casket of Kennedy and the others looking on in reverence, shows just how packed Kennedy’s service was. He estimates there are 60-plus dignitaries in the photo. Somewhere there is a list of everyone shown.
Getting the best shots sometimes had to come by hook or by crook, on boss’s orders.

“We had to find a way to get pictures. We had an admonition from our editor to not come back with just excuses,” he says.

During the viewing and funeral, Gomel found himself putting aside his personal relationship with Kennedy for work. He was 100 percent concerned with reporting it and capturing all the details with his camera.

“I had to disconnect from my association with the president and the fact he knew my name,” he says.
Gomel was in Houston with the president when he made his famous Moon Race speech at Rice University in September 1962. You can spy the photog in the background of a picture of Kennedy here in town, too.

“We choose to go to the moon,” Kennedy said that day. “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

“I can remember it clearly today,” said Gomel. “He has his fist clenched on the podium, and his delivery was so dynamic. He made all of us believe this was possible and achievable.”

Gomel captured a candid shot of Kennedy climbing out of a space capsule at NASA, which he’s extremely proud of. It’s in his home gallery, and one of the first photos you see when you come into his house. It’s symbolic of the country finally making it to the moon, just as Kennedy wanted.
After the 50th anniversary specials and tributes die down after Nov. 22, Gomel will continue to reflect on what he was a part of all those years ago.

“I wish I didn’t have to have that experience. I have gotten a small degree of fame from it, but I wish it came from another source.”

This fall he’s been a busy man, recounting a week of his life 50 years ago, a week that he wishes he wouldn’t have played such a small, but every important role in.

Gomel was on a team of Life photographers tasked with capturing every step of Kennedy’s funeral in November 1963. Gomel was all of 30 years old, thrust into an American nightmare, and assigned to document it all for folks at home. The somber proceedings threw a dark shroud over the country, but Gomel had to keep snapping photos. The fact that the slain president actually knew his name after years of Life coverage made the situation all the more harder for Gomel, who had been orbiting around Kennedy since before he was even elected president.

Friday, November 14, 2014

Review: Joe McNally at Monroe Gallery




photograph
November/December 2014

Review
By Douglas Fairfield

Monroe Gallery of Photography, Santa Fe

Yellowstone - Walkway in the Fog, 2006
Joe McNaIIy, Yellowstone - Walkway in the Fog, 2006.
©Joe McNaIIy. Courtesy Monroe Gallery

Being at the right place at the right time is a photographer's modus operandi, and photojournalist Joe McNally has had his share of right-place, right-time moments; moments that have resulted in memorable, if not iconic images. In a retrospective of the photographer's work - on view at Monroe Gallery of Photography in Santa Fe through November 23 - more than 45 images stand testament to McNaIIy's discerning eye, both in formal and candid situations. Photos in color and black and white dating from 1978 to 2013 feature subjects of a most eclectic nature not typically associated with one photographer. But given a 30-year career in which McNaIly has contributed to TIME, Newsweek, Fortune, The New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, and LIFE, among others, it is little wonder that his portfolio runs the gamut in terms of subject matter. This includes sports, politics, music, science, portraiture, the natural and urban landscape, and war. lnterestingly, McNaIIy carries the distinction of being the last staff photographer for LIFE, whose pages, over the years, were filled with photographs by Alfred Eisenstaedt, John Loengard, Carl Mydans, Gordon Parks, and W. Eugene Smith.

Among the pictures on display are eight life-size portraits by McNaIly of individuals impacted by the events of 9/11 taken just days following the horrific attack. lncluded are former mayor of New York City Rudolph Giuliani and New York firefighter Joe Hodges, each part of McNally's larger document called Faces of Ground Zero, which traveled around the country and spawned a book by the same title. The one-of-kind, 80 x 40-inch Polaroid photos are mounted on freestanding stanchions placed down the center of the gallery. Whereas each picture by McNally holds a newsworthy narrative, a few nudge into fine art, like Yellowstone— Walkway in the Fog, 2006, in which an unoccupied walkway emerging from the bottom center of the composition curves gently to the right leading the viewer into an otherworldly environment of shimmering, copper-colored mineral water and fog-shrouded background. In the upper left corner is a snow-covered rise where barely visible trees appear like scratchings upon the photographic surface. History-making events and sheer beauty are fully captured through McNally's lens.

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

John Doar, Federal Lawyer in Battle Against Segregation, Dies at 92


James Meredith with US Marshals, Oxford, Mississippi, 1962


--Via The New York Times

John Doar, who was a leader in the federal government’s legal efforts to dismantle segregation in the South during the most volatile period of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, and who returned to government service to lead the team that made the constitutional case for the possible impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon, died on Tuesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 92.

He escorted James Meredith onto the campus of the University of Mississippi in 1962, even as then-Gov. Ross Barnett and angry crowds sought to keep the school segregated. Doar later was the lead prosecutor in the federal trial arising from the deaths of three civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner. Those killings inspired the 1988 film "Mississippi Burning."

Full obituary here.




Related: June 21, 1964: The Murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Joe McNally in Rwanda, 1997





Refugee Girl after the Genocide, Rwanda, 1997



I was in Rwanda after the genocide, which was very difficult. Not only was there the evidence and smell of death lingering in many places, but it was also distressing to see the tidal wave of human displacement, orphaned children, and people with literally no place to go. I shot this picture in panorama format, as I was trying to get across the enormous sweep of this very large refugee camp in the volcanic highland area of the Rwandan-Zairean border. (Zaire is now the Congo.) 

What you don’t see in this picture is the crowd of some 300 to 400 people watching me shoot it. She was standing there, alone, and her simple, sweet, uncertain stance certainly made for a photograph. But I had an enormous crowd following me around, as visitors to a refugee camp often become that day’s movie. I crouched on the ground behind my tripod, shooting quickly, begging everyone to stay behind me. And, even though I was concentrating on making the picture, I became aware of the light touch of children’s fingers on my skin and hair. They were gently pinching and rubbing my skin, and pulling my hair. A white person was still strange to them and I believe they thought my coloration would somehow rub off and there would the more familiar black skin they were used to underneath. And my hair? Well that was really different, and the object of much interest. --Joe McNally


 Refugee Camp, Rwanda, 1997
 

Saturday, October 18, 2014

Steve Schapiro Talks Photography, Bowie, And 21st Century Hippies


 
Steve Schapiro with “Bowie, The Man Who Fell to Earth” New Mexico, 1975. Archival pigment print. 40 x 50 inches. Photo by: Carrie McGath
 

Via Chicagoist


Steve Schapiro's photographs occupy and navigate a space that is deeply human and soulful, encouraging his subjects to feel able to open their own apertures and shred any facade. David Bowie, more often a series of personas than a man, is captured by Schapiro as rawly human, even vulnerable at times, even if he is in character. The works in Schapiro's exhibition, "Warhol, Reed, and Bowie" at the Ed Pashcke Art Center acts as an archive of this ability. Some of these images are iconic; Bowie Smoking a Cigarette once graced the cover of Rolling Stone.

Schapiro spoke with me on the phone recently about this show, his past work and future projects. He has a way about him that encourages, even insists on, making his subjects comfortable in front of his lens.

CHICAGOIST: So you discovered photography at summer camp at the age of 9? Was that your first time with a camera?

STEVE SCHAPIRO: I think it was first time and I guess it was probably a Brownie camera, and I took pictures at the camp. What really excited me is that we developed our own film and to see them come out of the water, out of the chemicals, and to see the clouds and all of that to me was very exciting and it started me in being interested in taking a lot of pictures. Henri Cartier-Bresson's The Decisive Moment came out and that was an incredible book at the time and it is amazing how he caught the peak of action and also had such great design and gave you a sense of where you were and really made me decide I really wanted to become a photographer.

C: What about the beginning of your professional career? How did all of that start?

STEVE SCHAPIRO: When I was growing up as a journalistic photographer, the thing you could most hope for was to become a Life magazine photographer. So I set my sights on that and I started doing projects on my own. I spent four weeks at a migrant workers camp in Arkansas and that was one of the projects I did on my own. I came back and there was a small Catholic magazine called, Jubilee, and they would give you six to eight pages to do a portfolio. So I got my first portfolio printed on the migrant workers and the The New York Times picked up one of the pictures and used it as the cover shot for their magazine section, and I gradually worked into Life magazine and did quite a bit for them and for other magazines.

C: You're a great observer of humanity, even with iconic, larger-then-life figures like Bowie. I am thinking specifically of the Bowie photograph from The Man Who Fell to Earth, one of the highlights of the show. This was printed at the last minute for this exhibit, correct? There is a somberness and vulnerability in this work while it is magical.

STEVE SCHAPIRO: It's an image that was never printed till about two weeks before the show. I looked at that transparency and realized it is a really good picture, and it was only when I thought we needed another Bowie picture to round out the exhibit that I went back and looked at the transparencies and I found this image. It had never been edited or printed. It is entirely untouched.

C: Can you talk about how you tap into the personality of your subjects?

STEVE SCHAPIRO: Basically, when I am photographing, I try to be very quiet. When I am with someone I don't want to have a conversation with them because then they would be talking to me and they're not really being themselves. Their thoughts are what they are saying to me and what I am saying to them. I just look for those moments when there is something in their eyes or an attitude, something that shows the spirit of that person.

C: Another favorite of mine is the one of Warhol holding that displeased dog. So much is captured in that image.

STEVE SCHAPIRO: With that picture of Warhol, the Velvet Underground had done a concert and the promoter wasn't paying them for three weeks and there was this place that looked a castle in the Hollywood Hills and the person who owned it let them camp there. I was just walking around with Andy and suddenly he saw this dog and picked it up, and that was the picture. It wasn't anything we spent any time on and it is a very warm picture and a different side of him.

C: Do you find when you are photographing a performer like Bowie, a quintessential performer and artist, I am thinking, like you were saying, he was very aware he was being photographed, but he also seemed to put his guard down for you. Can you talk about that?

STEVE SCHAPIRO: I think Bowie is very smart and I think he has a great sense of images and in coming up with new kinds of images. The first session I did with him started at four in the afternoon and ended at four the next morning when I did that picture of him on the motorcycle, and we used the headlights of a car to light it. He would constantly come up with new costumes and I would pick up my camera to photograph him and it would be an incredible outfit, but he would stop me and say, "Wait a minute, I need to fix something," and he would go to the dressing room and come back 20 minutes later in something totally different. Fortunately, there would be a lot of things he would try on, so we would get a lot of pictures. The picture of him smoking a cigarette was a cover of Rolling Stone and it has been used a lot, but it was originally the cover for Rolling Stone.

C: Photographing celebrities aside, could you talk about your work with the everyman: the series of the migrant workers you talked about and also the addicts you photographed in East Harlem. I am wondering what drew you to these subjects.

STEVE SCHAPIRO: They're both highly emotional subjects where there are problems involved, and from a human basis, they are interesting situations to cover. I have a book coming out next year about the hippie movement of today. I photographed Haight-Ashbury in 1967 and it was the center of the hippie movement. My son and I photographed between 2011 and 2012 a lot of music festivals and situations like that and we photographed the spirit of a whole new generation who are not as much into drugs but into meditation and are conscious of organic food and good eating. Today there are these music festivals and there are people who just go from one to another and it is, in a sense, their religion. I met this one man who said I am not a Catholic, not a Baptist, I am a festivaltarian. What he meant was that, spirituality, he got an inner sense of a spiritual high. The books is really about the joy people have.

C: Any other projects?

STEVE SCHAPIRO: I am doing a new book on Misericordia, started by Sister Rosemary, a Catholic nun, and it is a place that is now 35 acres in upper Chicago. It is really for people who have developmental difficulties and it is an amazing place just filled with joy. It is really a joyful place, and that's the book I am working on right now.
C: To close, do you photograph everyday?

STEVE SCHAPIRO: I try to, and particularly when I am working on a specific project, I try to maintain a continuity. The Barbara Steisand book comes out in November and I am working on a Civil Rights book, so at the same time I am shooting new stuff, I am also going through old stuff for these books.

Slideshow here.

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Screening of the film Remembering Edward Weston


 
October 18, 2014
2:00 pm
Via The New Mexico Museum of Art

Celebrating its rich collection of photographs and the key role the medium has played in shaping New Mexico history, culture, and tourism, the museum presents a series of exhibitions in the year-long series Focus on Photography (March 7, 2014 – April 19, 2015). In conjunction with these exhibitions, the museum will host gallery talks by photographers as well as a photography film series:

October 18: Remembering Edward Weston is filled with stories and memories of this much-loved and influential photographer. The film includes interviews with two of Weston’s sons, his former wife Charis Wilson, historian Beaumont Newhall, and many others. Curator of Photography Katherine Ware will introduce the film with a short slide presentation about Edward Weston in New Mexico.

 
107 West Palace
Santa Fe, NM 87501
505.476.5072
www.nmartmuseum.org

Monday, September 29, 2014

Joe McNally: View from Top of Burj Khalifa, Dubai, 2013


 
Archival pigment print from an iPhone
8 x 10 inches, signed, limited edition of 100
Special exhibition print now available, please
 
 


Watch: Photographer Joe McNally climbs to the top of Dubai's Burj Khalifa (the World's tallest building), in hopes is seeking an unusual vantage point:






And you can watch our conversation with Joe McNally about the exhibit here:


Friday, September 26, 2014

Joe McNally in Conversation with Sid and Michelle Monroe

Joe Self-Portrait from Empire State Building, 2001
Joe's Self-Portrait from Empire State Building, 2001


In advance of opening night (October 3) at the Monroe Gallery of Photography in Santa Fe, Nikon Ambassador Joe McNally talks with Sid and Michelle Monroe and tells some of the stories behind the photos featured in the visit. You'll get to see the gallery and get a feel for what goes into creating an exhibit like this one, and a special print announcement will be made.

Questions are welcome. 

Monday, September 29  10:30 AM Eastern Time

Event page to watch on the Google+ stream:


https://plus.google.com/events/cr3n1kvl1je3b7c9mt9um2hcb5o
 

YouTube link  for live or watching whenever
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLIZyIDO5vw




The exhibition will continue threough November 23, 2014.

Thursday, September 25, 2014

“Unframed — Ellis Island,” by the French artist JR; Inspired by Stephen Wilkes





Isolation ward, curved corridor, Island 3



Via The New York Times




A new installation, “Unframed — Ellis Island,” by the French artist JR, which brings this landmark building, its patients and staff members, to grainy but wrenching life. It is the first time in 60 years that the Ellis Island hospital has been open to the public. Tickets go on sale Thursday for guided tours that begin on Oct. 1.


Unframed — Ellis Island” is part of JR’s larger “Unframed” series that puts archival photos in new contexts in places like Marseille, France; SĂ£o Paulo, Brazil; and Washington. He was introduced to this project by a book, “Ellis Island: Ghosts of Freedom,” the photographer Stephen Wilkes’s exploration of the hospital in its wildest state, and quickly became obsessed with the grounds. Finishing the installation this month, he and his small team would arrive in the morning and wander all day, scouting out homes for their century-old charges, before taking the tourist ferry back to Manhattan, toting ladders and paste buckets.


“It’s a really powerful place,” said Mr. Wilkes, who photographed it the hospital from 1998 to 2003, and is now on the board of Save Ellis Island. He was particularly moved by the realization that some patients could see the Statue of Liberty from their sickbeds. “She’s so close, and for many people who came to America and who never got out of that hospital, they never got to see any more than that,” Mr. Wilkes said.
Their emotion lingered. “I would feel almost human energy in these empty rooms,” he said.

Read the full article here.

View Stephen Wilkes' Ellis Island collection here.

Monday, September 22, 2014

The Giant Polaroid Camera and Joe McNally





The installation of the Joe McNally exhibit has started. First to arrive, the Giant Polaroids.

 
 
 

Joe McNally tells a bit about the history of these magnificent photographs,  via his blog:


In 2000, I was assigned to shoot pictures for a very small story (which was never published) on a unique photographic instrument called Moby C, which at the time lived on the lower East Side of NY. Moby after the whale, not the musician.  This camera is the world’s only Giant Polaroid camera, invented at the behest of Dr. Land himself. It is the size of a one car garage. Its lens came from a U2 spy plane, according to legend. At f/45, you have about an inch of depth of field. You cannot focus the lens–you have to focus your subject by moving them back and forth in tiny increments.

There is no shutter, you have to work camera obscura at the moment of exposure. I used about 25,000 watt seconds of strobe, mostly run through a 12×12 silk. The strobe system was wired to a Mamiya RZ 6×7 camera, bore sighted under the Polaroid lens. We would pose the subject, then wait for the interior workings of the Polaroid to spool up (there are two technicians inside the camera when you shoot, and they have to prepare things, like switch on a Black and Decker wet dry vac to suck the Polaroid film to the giant backplate of the camera). Then I would go dark in the studio, pull the cap of the Polaroid lens, fire the Mamiya and thus render an instantaneous dupe, one a huge positive, and the other a 6×7 transparency.

Huge indeed. What results after the exposure is a life sized image, 40″x 80″. You lay it out on the floor of the camera, wait 90 seconds (it’s the same Polaroid paper that comes in your over the counter cameras) and then peel the chemical backing off. There you have it.

I had convinced the elegant and easy going Jennifer Ringer, a principal with the NYC Ballet, to come and work with me during this first, experimental day with the camera. We made some nice, big pictures of her. (I was chuckling inside during this shoot, harking back to our old philosophy at LIFE magazine: “If ya can’t make ‘em good, make ‘em big and in color!”)

Made seven successful images that day, which is a lot of production for this behemoth of a camera, and found I had a bit of an affinity for working it. (Try anything once, right? Just have faith and remember the Lord looks after a fool.)






 Hmmm. Things stick with you, right? A week after 9/11, I sent an email to the only guy I knew who had a bunch of cash and would give me a quick decision; the editorial director of Time Warner, John Huey. John’s basically an old Southern newspaper man who kind of looks at you sideways, lets you babble, and then tells you what he thinks. He’s smart as a whip, quick off the mark, and does not suffer fools or photographers gladly.

I sent him the email on a Thursday night. He gave me money for the project Monday morning. The pressure was on. He was taking a huge gamble with his company’s dough, $100,000, to be direct about it. He looked me in the eye and drawled, “Joe, you spend $20,000 and get me no pitchahs, that’s okay. You spend $100,000 and get me no pitchahs, we got a problem.” He kind of drew out the word, “prrroblem.” I gulped and left his office.


My notion was that this camera was made for people of stature, a heroic instrument, if you will. You have to literally stand for your portrait. You collect yourself in the dark, holding still, waiting for the strobe explosion. And then you are done. One shot. (90% of our subjects we did in one exposure. Each sheet of Polaroid cost $300. I dreaded blinkers.)


It became a document known as Faces of Ground Zero. It toured through seven stops, opening at Grand Central Station, and coming back to NY a year later. For the anniversary show they threw a huge tent over where they usually put the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center. It was seen by lots of people. The Polaroids and the resultant book(s) helped the sponsors, Time Warner and Morgan Stanley, to donate close to $2 million dollars to the relief of downtown public education. In the tent at the Rock Center show, we sold about $40,000 worth of books in 3 weeks. All of it went to the downtown PTA’s.




My good friend, Louie Cacchioli. Louie saved a lot of people that day by keeping his head and telling them to follow his light. Out on West St., running from the second collapse, he was overtaken by the cloud of ash and soot. Blinded by the smoke, he felt along the ground and stumbled onto a discarded oxygen mask. He clapped it to his face. He estimates he had about 30 seconds left.



Jan Demczur, a Polish window washer who scraped through 6 inches of sheet rock with his squeegee blade and thus saved the 4 people he was trapped in an elevator with. His squeegee is in the Smithsonian.





Joe Hodges. A veteran firefighter who could have easily retired after 9/11, but chose to stay on. “The older guys have to stick around and show the younger guys the way,” was how he put it.






So we kept working. Our last subject was Rudy Giuliani. He finally came on the last night. We were out of money, out of time. We shot 2 Polaroids of hizzoner, and closed the doors.




Things you don’t think about while you are in the throes of a project like this, are, what happens next? After ebeing xhibited in seven cities in 2002, seen by almost a million, I became the owner, lock, stock and metal framework, of about 10 tons of photography. (The framed pieces, which form the traveling core of the show, are 4′x9′ and weigh about 300 pounds.) They reside in museum quality, climate controlled storage in a warehouse in New Jersey.


Monroe Gallery of Photography is honored to include 6 Giant Polaroids in the forthcoming exhibit. The exhibit opens with a public reception for Joe McNally October 3, and continues through November 23. You can tune in to a special Google+ Hangout with Joe McNally and Sid and Michelle Monroe on Monday, September 29  10:30 Eastern time. Joe will tell some of the stories behind the photos featured in the visit. You'll get to see the gallery and get a feel for what goes into creating an exhibit like this one. Questions are welcome. To listen bookmark this link. (Also available live or for later viewing on YouTube here.


 
 
 
 
 
 



Friday, September 19, 2014

Photo exhibit captures soldiers unaware of their fate in Philippines

By Chris Quintana
Via The Santa Fe New Mexican



Before Bataan: Photo exhibit captures soldiers unaware of their fate in Philippines
In August 1940, members of the 200th Coast Artillery Regiment gathered to train at Camp Luna near Las Vegas, N.M., before deployment to the Bataan Peninsula. Many never returned. Courtesy New Mexico Magazine Collection/Palace of the Governors Photo Archives Negative No. HP200720332


The young men photographed during military drills or waiting in line for food at Camp Luna near Las Vegas, N.M., had no idea that hundreds of them would die defending the Bataan Peninsula, walking in the Bataan Death March or during imprisonment by the Japanese under brutal conditions.


In August 1940, members of the 200th Coast Artillery Regiment, which included more than 1,800 New Mexicans, had gathered to train for the last time on home soil. A year later, their units were deployed to the Philippines. The 10 black-and-white images in a new photo exhibit at the Jean Cocteau Cinema capture the soldiers’ blissful ignorance.
                                

“They’re human beings, not just cogs in the machine,” said Daniel Kosharek, the photo curator for the Palace of the Governors.

Kosharek said he has wanted to display these photos for a while to honor and recognize the young men, but until now he didn’t have the chance.

The exhibit will be on display at the Jean Cocteau until Oct. 12 in the cinema’s gallery at 418 Montezuma Ave. It will be open to the public from 1 to 8 p.m. daily. The images by an unnamed photographer are from the New Mexico Magazine Collection at the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives.

Kosharek said the photos were part of a series that published in a 1940 edition of New Mexico Magazine.

Many of the 1,816 New Mexicans in the regiment were fluent in Spanish, which led military officials to deploy them to the Philippines before the war to aid Filipino troops in defending the Bataan Peninsula.

When the peninsula fell to the Japanese in April 1942, many were captured and forced on the 65-mile Bataan Death March that ended in the deaths of 10,000 troops — 9,000 Filipinos and 1,000 Americans.

According to a news release, by the end of the war, 829 New Mexicans from the regiment were dead or missing. More than 800 died during the march or during their imprisonment. A third of the survivors perished within the year due to injuries or illness. Two survivors still live in Santa Fe: Richard Dalyand John Moseley.

But the photos in the exhibit show none of the horrors awaiting the young men. Instead, the men are photographed slogging through the monotony of military training at the rural, dusty Camp Luna.

One photo depicts a line of soldiers clad in wide-brimmed hats marching along what appears to be a dusty road. Rifles are slung over their shoulders, but the firearms look more like props than weapons. Another image depicts the soldiers-in-training firing heavy artillery. A plume of dark gray smoke wafts from one of the cannons, a harbinger of what awaits the men overseas.

One of the photos depicts several tall young men waiting in line at the mess hall. They carry what appear to be tin pans and ceramic plates. Dressed in civilian attire, they leer at the photographer with a combination of something between curiosity and annoyance. One wears an Albuquerque High School T-shirt adorned with the school’s mascot, a growling bulldog. The photos are specked with dust, but there’s no denying the innocence in the young men’s faces.

As part of the exhibit, the Jean Cocteau will screen the 2005 film The Great Raid at 1:30 p.m. Saturday. The film was based on William Breuer’s The Great Raid on Cabanatuan and Hampton Sides’ Ghost Soldiers, both accounts of the rescue mission to save Bataan prisoners of war. Tickets are $7.

If you go
What: Photo exhibit titled Before Bataan: New Mexico’s 200th Coast Artillery
When: 1 to 8 p.m. through Oct. 12
Where: Jean Cocteau Cinema, 418 Montezuma Ave.
On the Web
• For more information about the photo exhibit, visit nmhistorymuseum.org or jeancocteaucinema.com.

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Live-Stream tonight: After James Foley- Covering Conflict When Journalists Are Targets







Via Columbia School of Journalism


Tuesday, Sep. 9, 2014, 7:00pm
         
Dean Steve Coll leads a panel to discuss the current risks, rewards, and inner workings of conflict reporting in the aftermath of reporters James Foley and Steven Sotloff's tragic murders.


Speakers include Reuters columnist and former New York Times reporter David Rohde, held captive for seven months by the Taliban before he escaped; New York Times foreign correspondent Rukmini Callimachi, previously the West Africa bureau chief for The Associated Press; Phil Balboni, GlobalPost CEO and co-founder, who spent two years fighting for Foley's release; Nicole Tung, a freelance conflict photographer and Foley friend who first discovered him missing; and Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. This event is sponsored by Columbia Journalism School, the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Overseas Press Club of America.


Seating will be on a first-come, first-served basis. This event will be live streamed.

Thursday, September 4, 2014

September 4, 1957


Ed Clark—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Segregationists rousted from an anti-integration protest, Little Rock, Arkansas, 1957
 


 
On September 4, 1957, the "Little Rock Nine" attempted to enter Little Rock Central High School but were turned away by Arkansas National Guard troops called out by the governor. When Elizabeth Eckford arrived at the campus at the intersection of 14th and Park Streets, she was confronted by an angry mob of segregationist protestors. She attempted to enter at the front of the school but was directed back out to the street by the guardsmen. Walking alone, surrounded by the crowd, she eventually reached the south end of Park Street and sat down on a bench to wait for a city bus to take her to her mother’s workplace. Of her experience, Eckford
They moved closer and closer. ... Somebody started yelling. ... I tried to see a friendly face somewhere in the crowd—someone who maybe could help. I looked into the face of an old woman and it seemed a kind face, but when I looked at her again, she spat on me.


 
The Little Rock Nine enter classroom to register after escort from Army's 101st Airborne Division, September 24, 1957
Grey Villet

Federal troops escorting African American students to school during integration, September, 1957
Ed Clark—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
 
 
Ernest C. Withers
 
 

September 25, 1957, became a historic day in the Nation when nine courageous children risked their lives to attend Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Confronted by a hostile crowd and escorted by the Screaming Eagles of the 101st Airborne, they shouldered the burden of integrating a then segregated public school system. Although the Supreme Court’s Landmark 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education struck down racial segregation in public schools, it was the courageous actions of these nine young champions of school integration that tested the strength of that decision. Their actions not only mobilized a Nation to insure that access to a quality education was granted to all Americans, but they helped to define the civil rights movement. They became known as the Little Rock Nine. via LittleRock9.com

Related: LIFE.com         Brave Hearts: Remembering the Little Rock Nine

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

The 90th Annual Burning of Zozobra, Friday, Aug. 29, 2014


 
 
Zozobra (Old Man Gloom) is a giant marionette effigy that is built and burned every by the Kiwanis Club of Santa Fe to kick off Fiestas de Santa Fe in Santa Fe, New Mexico. As his name suggests, he embodies gloom; by burning him, people destroy the worries and troubles of the previous year in the flames. Anyone with an excess of gloom is encouraged to write down the nature of his or her gloom on a slip of paper and it will be stuffed into Zozobra and burned.


More information here. A link to the Internet live stream will be posteed here.

(The Gallery will close at 2 PM on Friday, August 29 and resume regular hours Saturday and Sunday, 10 - 5.)

Friday, August 15, 2014

Joe McNally Exhibition October 3 - November 23, 2014




A young girl takes to an abandoned building for the shade in January of 1999, Mumbai, India

 


Santa Fe--Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, is pleased to announce a major exhibition by internationally acclaimed American photographer and long-time photojournalist, Joe McNally. The exhibition will open with a public reception for Joe McNally on Friday, October 3, 5 - 7 PM. The exhibition will continue through November 23. (The exhibit is now featured on www.monroegallery.com; also to be announced is a Google Hangout in September.)


The exhibit features more than 45 photographs from Joe McNally’s remarkable career that has spanned more than 30 years and included assignments in 60 countries. Joe was the last staff photographer in the history of LIFE magazine, sharing a legacy with his heroes and mentors—Carl Mydans, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Gordon Parks, John Loengard—who forever influenced and shaped his work. McNally won the first Alfred Eisenstaedt Award for Journalistic Impact for a LIFE coverage titled, “The Panorama of War.” He has been honored numerous times by Communication Arts, PDN, Graphis, American Photo, POY, and The World Press Photo Foundation. His prints are in numerous collections, most significantly the National Portrait Gallery of the United States and National September 11 Memorial & Museum.
McNally is often described as a generalist because of his ability to execute a wide range of assignment work, and was listed at one point by American Photo as one of the “100 Most Important People in Photography” and described by the magazine as “perhaps the most versatile photojournalist working today.” His expansive career has included being an ongoing contributor to the National Geographic - shooting numerous cover stories and highly complex, technical features for the past 25 years; a contract photographer for Sports Illustrated; as well as shooting cover stories for TIME, Newsweek, Fortune, New York, and The New York Times Sunday Magazine.

McNally’s most well-known series is "Faces of Ground Zero - Portraits of the Heros of September 11th", a collection of 246 Giant Polaroid portraits shot in the Moby c Studio near Ground Zero in a three-week period shortly after 9/11. A large group of these historic, compelling, life-size (9’ x 4’) photos were exhibited in seven cities in 2002, and seen by almost a million people. Sales of the exhibit book helped raise over $2 million for the 9/11-relief effort. This collection is considered by many museum and art professionals to be one of the most significant artistic endeavors to evolve from the 9/11 tragedy, and examples are included in the exhibit. Some of McNally’s other renowned photographic series include: “The Future of Flying,” cover & 32-page story, National Geographic Magazine, December 2003. The story, on the future of aviation and the first all digital shoot in the history of that venerable magazine, commemorated the centennial observance of the Wright Brothers' flight. This issue was a National Magazine Award Finalist and his coverage was deemed so noteworthy it has been incorporated into the archives of the Library of Congress.

He regularly writes a popular, irreverent blog  about the travails, tribulations, oddities and very occasional high moments of being a photographer, and has also authored several noteworthy books on photography, two of which, The Moment It Clicks and The Hot Shoe Diaries, cracked Amazon’s Top Ten list of best sellers. While his work notably springs from the time-honored traditions of magazine journalism, McNally has also adapted to the internet driven media world, and was recently named as one of the “Top 5 Most Socially Influential Photographers” by Eye-Fi. His work and his blog are regularly cited in social media surveys as sources of inspiration and industry leadership. He is also among the rare breed of photographer who has bridged the world between photojournalism and advertising, amassing an impressive commercial and advertising client list including FedEx, Nikon, Epson, Sony, Land’s End, General Electric, MetLife, USAA, Adidas, ESPN, the Beijing Cultural Commission, and American Ballet Theater.
A sought-after workshop instructor and lecturer, he has taught at the Santa Fe Photographic Workshop, the Eddie Adams Workshop, the National Geographic Society, Smithsonian Institution, the Annenberg Space for Photography, Rochester Institute of Technology, the Disney Institute, and the U.S. Department of Defense. He received his bachelor’s and graduate degrees from Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, and returns there to lecture on a regular basis. Recently, he was named as a Nikon USA Ambassador, an honor which has a special reverence for him, as he bought his first Nikon camera in 1973, and for forty years, from the deserts of Africa to the snows of Siberia, he has seen the world through those cameras.

 
Monroe Gallery of Photography was founded by Sidney S. Monroe and Michelle A. Monroe. Building on more than four decades of collective experience, the gallery specializes in 20th and 21st Century Photojournalism. The gallery also represents a select group of contemporary and emerging photographers.

 
Gallery hours are 10 to 5 daily. Admission is free. For further information, please call: 505.992.0800; E-mail: info@monroegallery.com


 Preview the exhibit here.







 
Bolshoi Ballet, Moscow, 1997
 



 

Thursday, August 14, 2014

“Police militarization has been among the most consequential and unnoticed developments of our time, and it is now beginning to affect press freedom.”

Occupied Ferguson.
Occupied Ferguson. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)


“Police militarization has been among the most consequential and unnoticed developments of our time, and it is now beginning to affect press freedom.”


HuffPost, Washington Post reporters assaulted, arrested in Ferguson


Police firing tear gas at a TV news camera crew, in Ferguson, Mo., which is a city in the United States of America


"A SWAT team. To take out cameras. In the United States of America. Because you know how dangerous it is when people start pointing those things around"




The fiasco in Ferguson shows why you don't give military equipment to cops


You have a right to record the police
The Militarization of U.S. Police: Finally Dragged Into the Light by the Horrors of Ferguson


 NYPD sends memo telling officers they're allowed to be photographed


Photos: Protests continue for fourth night in Ferguson


"The gentleman on the left has more personal body armor and weaponry than I did while invading Iraq"


Ferguson or Iraq? Photos Unmask the Militarization of America's Police


"During the Obama administration, according to Pentagon data, police departments have received tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft"


How the Post-Dispatch’s photo staff is covering Ferguson






Related:   FREEDOM OF THE PRESS?


                "Is there too much press freedom? Ask 72 dead journalists"


                 "unprecedented rise in the number of journalists killed and imprisoned in the past year"


                 Comprehensive investigation of threats to press freedoms under the Obama administration







Saturday, July 26, 2014

CBS News: 50 Years Later, Civil Rights





A half-century after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the landmark Civil Rights Act, CBS News' Bob Schieffer hosted a symposium on Americans' historic fight against segregation, and the continuing struggle for equal rights for all. In this preview, the tumultuous summer of 1964 is reviewed, when three civil rights workers went missing. It also explores the impact of the civil rights movement through first-hand accounts of the activists and public figures who continue to fight for social justice today

"CBS News: 50 Years Later, Civil Rights," moderated by Bob Schieffer features civil rights activist Harry Belafonte, U.S. Rep. John Lewis, actress Whoopi Goldberg and others. Watch the full symposium here, and more here.

Monday, July 7, 2014

FREEDOM SUMMER

 
 
 
 
 
In the hot and deadly summer of 1964, the nation’s eyes were riveted on Mississippi.
 
freedom summer
 

Over ten memorable weeks known as Freedom Summer, more than 700 student volunteers joined with organizers and local African Americans in an historic effort to shatter the foundations of white supremacy in Mississippi, the nation’s most segregated state. The summer was marked by sustained and deadly violence, including the notorious murders of three civil rights workers, countless beatings, the burning of thirty-five churches, and the bombing of seventy homes and community centers.

In the face of this violence, these organizers, volunteers, and Mississippians worked together to canvass for voter registration, create Freedom Schools, and establish an alternative challenge to the State Democratic Party — the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Borne of Freedom Summer, and in response to the challenges of registering voters directly within hostile Mississippi, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party registered its own voters outside of the discriminatory system, ultimately sending a delegation of 68 members to attend the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City to confront and unseat the all-white delegation.

Directed by award-winning documentary filmmaker and MacArthur "Genius" Fellow Stanley Nelson (Freedom Riders, The Murder of Emmett Till), FREEDOM SUMMER highlights an overlooked but essential element of the Civil Rights Movement: the patient and long-term efforts by both outside activists and local citizens in Mississippi to organize communities and register black voters — even in the face of intimidation, physical violence and death. The Freedom Summer story reminds us that the movement that ended segregation was far more complex than most of us know.

American Experience will broadcast the film this summer, which marks both the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer and the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court's Shelby County v. Holder decision, which struck down key protections afforded by the landmark civil rights legislation borne of the political momentum generated by this historical movement — The Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Join  the Bronx Documentary Center this Saturday, July 12, at 8:15 PM for Freedom Summer
Film by Emmy award-winner Stanley Nelson followed by panel discussion with veterans of the 1964 Freedom Rides. The event is part of the Bronx Documentary Center’s summer exhibition and program series, The 60s: Decade of Change.

Watch online via PBS here.

Related: June 21, 1964: The Murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner

 

Thursday, July 3, 2014

JULY 4 IN SANTA FE




© Steve Schapiro: Boy with Flag, Selma March, 1965


2014 Pancakes on the Plaza

2014 Pancakes on the Plaza

It's almost automatic. When locals think Fourth of July in Santa Fe, Pancakes On The Plaza comes to mind first. From the deliciousness of the pancakes to the cool cars on display ... from the toe-tapping music to the unique art show, Pancakes On The Plaza has something for everyone. And as it brings the communities of Santa Fe and Northern New Mexico together to celebrate our nation's birthday, the proceeds generated from Pancakes on the Plaza make a big difference in the lives of people in need.

Get All Your Pancake Info here


Then, stroll over and preview the Steve Schapiro exhibition "Once Upon A Time in America". The gallery will be open Friday, July 4 from 9 to 3, and Saturday July 5 from 10 - 5. There will be a public reception welcoming the renowned photographer Steve Schapiro to Santa Fe and celebrating the official opening of his exhibit from 5 - 7 Saturday evening.