The Photojournalist

New York City. 1951. It was the portrait of Magnum photographer Dennis Stock, although most of his face remained in shadow. It won its photographer Andreas Feininger ‘LIFE Young Photographers Contest’ in 1951. Stock holding a Leica SM camera vertically to face and looking through a seperate TEWE viewfinder (which balanced the photo for compositional reasons) symbolizes the transformation of photojournalists into mechanized insects.

Dennis Stock later took the most famous pictures of James Dean. The above photo came to be identified with photojournalism so much that LIFE magazine used it as the cover of their book, “What They Saw”.

First Plutonium

Although Enrico Fermi had discovered element 94 (which he named Hesperium) in 1934, it was not first produced and isolated until December 14, 1940. By then, it was named after Pluto after the symbol ‘Pu’ was jokingly suggested. A paper documenting the discovery was written but was withdrawn before publication after the discovery that an isotope of the new element (Pu-239) could undergo nuclear fission in a way that might be useful in an atomic bomb.

Publication was delayed until a year after the end of World War II due to security concerns. In 1946, LIFE’s Fritz Goro was finally allowed to photograph plutonium. The above was that picture–the first speck of the world’s first plutonium on an platinum shovel.

During his four decades as a science photographer for Life magazine, Goro documented images made possible only by this turbulent century’s scientific advances: atomic orbitals, DNA helices, stars, blood circulation in animals and computer chips. He also unblinkingly documented fish eggs with well-developed eyes, minuscule yet recognizable cow fetuses (that became poster images for anti-abortion), a cancerous growth in a rabbit’s eye, a chick with an experimental transplanted eye, a rat with a walnutlike tumor growing from its head, and his most memorable and horrific 1965  photograph of surgery being conducted on a prenatal monkey.  Stephen Jay Gould called Goro “the most influential photographer that science journalism (and science in general) has ever known.”

First Atomic Blast

Forget Hiroshima. Above was the aerial picture of the first atomic bomb crater near Alamogordo, New Mexico on July 16th, 1945. The site was called Trinity Site; despite its subsequent notoriety, only one nuclear test took place at this location which itself was 60 miles from Alamogordo.

From two bunkers ten and seventeen miles away, Generals Thomas Farrell and Leslie Groves watched the detonation. J.Robert Oppenheimer, who came up with the name ‘Trinity’ from poetry of John Donne, was in the first bunker. The blinding light they saw was the dawn of so-called ‘Atomic Age’.

The photographer of the above image, Fritz Goro visited the first nuclear ground zero with Oppenheimer and Groves while it was still ‘hot’. For this German emigre photographer, it was a big deal but it was not the only ‘first’ he witnessed. During his four decades as a science photographer for Life magazine, he documented images made possible only by this turbulent century’s scientific advances: atomic orbitals, DNA helices, stars, blood circulation in animals, computer chips, and photos of the first plutonium ever produced. Goro unblinkingly documented fish eggs with well-developed eyes, minuscule yet recognizable cow fetuses (that became poster images for anti-abortion), a cancerous growth in a rabbit’s eye, a chick with an experimental transplanted eye, a rat with a walnutlike tumor growing from its head, and his most memorable and horrific 1965  photograph of surgery being conducted on a prenatal monkey.  Stephen Jay Gould called Goro “the most influential photographer that science journalism (and science in general) has ever known.”

Alec Guinness

Alec Guinness, England, 1952 by Cornell Capa

A Shakespearean actor who was better known for his ability to be entirely absorbed into characters he was playing on stage, Alec Guinness entered movies through the Ealing comedies. The year 1952 was a breakthrough year for him; director Ronald Neame cast Guinness in his first romantic lead role in The Card. The story was about a charming and ambitious young man who raises himself through the ranks in business and social standing by both honest and dishonest means.

“Versatile and self-effacing actor who turned anonymity into an art form and himself into an international star,” wrote the Times in Guinness obituary. If there was one image that defined Guinness’s acting, this Capa image would be that one.

Margaret Bourke-White

This picture of Life Magazine’s photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White atop the Chrysler Building was taken by her dark room assistant Oscar Graubner.

“Photography is a very subtle thing. You must let the camera take you by the hand, as it were, and lead you into your subject.” Margaret Bourke-White led the rest of us by the hand on many occasions. In 1929, she did the lead story for the first issue of Fortune, and the next year was the first Western photographer allowed into the USSR. In 1936, she collaborated with future husband Erskine Caldwell on a book documenting the rural poor of the South. Later that year she became one of the four original LIFE photographers, and had the cover shot for the inaugural issue.

She was America’s first accredited woman photographer in WWII, and the first authorized to fly on a combat mission. She was one of the first to depict the death camps, and later became the last person to interview Gandhi, six hours before he was slain. Her hundreds of thousands of photos are about adventure, sensitivity, composition and courage.

Goebbels by Eisenstaedt

Hitler’s Minister  of Culture Dr. Joseph Goebbels glowering as he sits in the garden of the Carlton Hotel to attend the League of Nations. In September 1933, Goebbels was in Geneva for his first trip abroad. On 29th September, he gave his peace speech, defending the Nazi’s seizure of power. An extraordinary orator, he won the respect of dipomats with his speech An Appeal to the Nations, and the appraisal of international journalists in the subsequent press conference. One, a correspondent of the Paris “Journal” wrote then, “Dr. Goebbels combines German mysticism with Latin logic.”

The photo was taken in 1933 by LIFE magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt. One of his most memorable pictures, the portrait still casts its evil spell more than 70 years later. “The fierce arrogance of power, normally covered with false grace of good humor, shone through miraculously into Eisenstaedt’s film,” later wrote LIFE magazine. A Jew, Eisenstaedt himself remembered: “He looked at me with hateful eyes and waited for me to wither. But I didn’t wither. If I have a camera in my hand, I don’t know fear.”

Dark haired, club-footed and physically diminutive, Goebbels was not the symbol of healthy tall, blond, Nordic master-race he defended. This ‘unbleached shrucken Teuton’ (as the Nazi inner circle called him) occupies only a small amount of space in the photo, yet as a man of power and notoriety, he dominates the photo with his fierce personality and penetrating eyes.

The man trying to hand Goebbels a note was Nazi Chief Interpreter Dr. Paul Schmidt. Schmidt was present throughout Nazi’s rise to power, and witnessed such pivotal occasions as the Munich Agreement and Hitler meeting Petain in 1940. In the latter occasion, Schmidt was the person photographed between Hitler and Petain.

Attack on Guillermo Ford

Guillermo “Billy” Ford served as Vice-President of Panama from 1989 to 1994 but he was best remembered for this classic photo, which shows him beaten by thugs in the employ of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega. Then a VP candidate, Ford and his presidential running-mate, Guillermo Endara, had defeated Noriega’s party in the democratic elections a few days prior.

At the end of a rally in support of Endara, a band of Noriega’s Dignity Battalion — nicknamed “Dig Bats” and called “Doberman thugs” by U.S. President Bush — attacked the crowd with wooden planks, metal pipes and guns. They grabbed a bodyguard of Ford, pushed him against a car, shoved a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. They also batted Ford’s head with a spike-tipped metal rod and pounded him with heavy clubs, turning his white guayabera bright red with blood — his own, and that of his dead bodyguard.

The photo taken by Ron Haviv (AFP) became one of the most famous images of 1989. It was put on the cover of Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News. It was the beginning of the end for Noriega. Ford embarked on a tour of Europe to meet British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Italian Prime Minister Giulio Adreotti and Pope John Paul II. In December 1989, citing danger to the Canal, President Bush decided to invade Panama. There, at Fort Clayton, Panama, surrounded by 24,000 U.S. troops, heavy tanks and Combat Talon AC-130 gunships, Guillermo Endara, was sworn in as the President.

The Rescuing of the Abu Simbel

1968. Abu Simbel. Egypt. Workmen re-assembles the giant pieces of sculpture of the famous temples of Abu Simbel. The Mammouth pieces have been moved to a new site to save them from being swallowed up by the Nile River when the Aswan High Dam Project is completed. The Temples were dismantled two years before by hardening the porous sandstone with the injections of resin, and sawing them into blocks weighing twenty to thirty tons each. The 1000-plus pieces were then transported to the stone graveyard where they were again injected with epoxy resin to prevent the stone from crumbling. They were eventually lifted 65 meters and shifted 180 meters inland to prevent them from being flooded.

Aswan lies 280 km south of the first nile cataract at Egyptian-Sudanese border. At the time of this dedication, it was an important centre of trade. Ramses II built two temples there–a smaller one for his wife, Nefertari (which remains the only Ancient Egyptian temple dedicated to a wife of a pharaoh) and the Great Temple for the gods Amun-Re, Re-Harachte, Ptah and himself. The 38 meters wide facade was covered by four statutes of Ramses, each 20 meters tall, and the temple itself reaches 65 meters into the rock.

Every year on the equinoxes (March 21, September 23 when day and night are equally long), a beam of light shines directly into the long hallway of the temple and illuminates the four statues at the back wall of the sanctuary. The light reaches Re-Harachte (who is the combination of the god of sun, Re and the god of heaven, Horus), then shifts to Ramses, and finally to Amun-Re. Ptah, the god of darkness, remains in the shade.

Exxon Valdez Oil Spill

In this March 26, 1989 picture, the smaller vessel Exxon Baton Rouge, left, attempts to off-load crude oil from the Exxon Valdez. Two days before, four minutes after midnight The Valdez ran aground in Alaska’s Prince William sound shortly after leaving Trans-Alaska pipeline terminal at Valdez, spilling about 11 million gallons of crude oil, causing widespread environmental damage. Within a few days, some 250,000 to 260,000 barrels of crude oil leak from the tanker, contaminating over 2,000 kms of Alaska coastline. Although three-quarters of the crude oil were recovered, it was still the largest oil spill in history.

The National Transportation Safety Board determined that the cause lies with a third mate who failed to properly maneuver the vessel due to fatigue and excessive workload and with the captain with alcohol problems. However, the real cause was that Valdez, like 60% of all oil tankers, has no double hull. Only 0.1 inch of steel separate these vessels from an oil spill.

Exxon financed the cleanup operations at a cost of $2.1 billion over four Arctic summers. Some 10,000 workers were hired to scrub the oil from the rocky shoreline and the wildlife. Although the original punitive damages awarded totalled $5 billion, the Supreme Court reduced it to $507.5 million last week.

Above photo, taken by Rob Stapleton for AP, shows the extent of oil spill.

Albanian Refugees

August 8, 1991. Bari, Italy. As Albania descended into armed anarchy in 1991, refugees fled to southern Italy, including these people who sailed to Brindisi from the Albanian port of Durazzo on a hijacked ship.

This photo by Luca Turi recalls Weegee’s photograph of a holiday crowd on a beach at Coney Island from the New Yorker magazine. There is the same extraordinary mass of humanity on a hot sunny day by the sea. But where Weegee’s crowd was happy, this one is anxious and creates anxiety in the viewer. Since the dismantling of the Soviet Bloc in the late 198s, the boundary between western and eastern Europe has ceased to exist, but the West has not faced up to what that means. Instability and comparative poverty have led to huge movements of people westward and across Europe. The more afflunent states refuse to acknowledge the permanence of this new migration.

This photograph of people fleeing Albania might stand for many other recent waves of forced migration, and the image of a massing of people, a sea of people sums up the anxiety such floods of humanity provoke. Yet, this is a picture anyone can empathize with. It is an image of hopeful, democratic humanity and the comparison with Weegee is not coincidental. THese are the same ‘huddled masses’ who emigrated to America from Europe at the beginning of the 20th century. Today, the movement is from impoverished Europe to rich Europe, post-communist Europe to democratic Europe. This picture’s significance is not yet decided. It will be part of the history we make.

— Jonathan Jones, Photos That Changed the World.

9/11 Firemen

Hours after the 9/11 attacks, three firefighters had spontaneously used a U.S. flag taken off a yacht and raised it in the wreckage of the World Trade Center. A newspaper photographer Thomas Franklin captured the scene, creating one of the most memorable flag raising scenes since Iwo Jima. Franklin was working for The Bergen Record newspaper of Passaic, New Jersey. When the first hit hit the Twin Towers, his editor sent him to cover the event, but it was only in that evening that he captured this iconic image.

It was 5:01 p.m., eight hours after the attack. Three firemen (left to right, George Johnson of Ladder 157, Dan McWilliams of Ladder 157, and Billy Eisengrein of Rescue 2) — unaware they were being caught on film — were raising an American flag amid the ruins. Franklin, who had just 30 digital frames left in his camera, captured the moment which instantly came to symbolize American resilience in the face of the murders of 2,819 innocent people.

The photograph has appeared on the covers of many publications, including Newsweek, USA Today, Parade Sunday Magazine, and People magazine. It was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and the winner of countless awards, and used for a special U.S. Postal Service stamp released in March 2002 to raise funds for families of emergency workers killed or permanently disabled as a result of the 9/11 attacks. Franklin has been a guest on radio and television shows many times, including the Today show (three times), Good Morning America, CNN, Fox Cable Network, and Oprah.

A year after the attacks, Franklin reunited with three firefighters for a new shot of the men for his newspaper and Newsweek magazine, this time using the Statue of Liberty as the background. The flag, the day’s most famous artifact, has been missing for five years, so they had to do without.

Above, at the stamp unveiling on 11 March 2002. From left to right, Postmaster General Jack Potter, Eisengrein, Johnson, President Bush, Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.), McWilliams, and Franklin.

The Torture of Samuel Doe

Photo by Patrick Robert

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Even by the standards of time and other atrocities committed during the Liberian Civil War, it was a gruesome incident. One of many US supported tyrants in Africa, Samuel Doe, ruled Liberia from 1980 to 1990. Finally his regime was toppled by Charles Taylor (who proved to be worse than Doe). During the war, a rebel leader Prince Yormie Johnson split from Taylor’s NPFL and formed the INPFL; then he and his forces captured Doe in September 9, 1990. 

To prove that Doe was not protected by black magic, Johnson ordered that the deposed president’s ears be cut off. Then some of Doe’s fingers and toes were also cut off. After 12 hours of torture at Johnson’s hands,Doe was finally murdered; his corpse had its head shaved and was exhibited naked with cigarette burns on it in the streets of Monrovia where they spilled dirty water on his head. 

The gruesome incident was recorded by the INPFL on video tape. Journalists Stephen Smith of Liberation, Mark Huband and Patrick Robert of French photoagency Sygma (who took the above image of Liberian soldiers posing with the body of Doe) — who were present at the INPFL camp — were given the videotape. It was seen on news reports around the world and was a best selling film in West Africa. Now even two decades later, it is still doing the rounds in the markets of Monrovia; Johnson sipping a Budweiser and being fanned by an assistant as Doe’s ear is cut off became almost an image transplanted from a Shakespearean play or from mediaeval times. (Johnson who remains a prominent politician in Liberia later denied killing Doe, saying that he committed suicide in captivity by banging his head against the wall).

While a master sergeant in the army, Doe had staged a violent coup d’état and staged a televised execution of the previous president and the ruling party. It was karmic that he in his turn became the first world leader to be tortured on camera before being executed and his body desecrated. It should have brought the nation full circle, but it did not. More violence under Taylor would kill more Liberians. It was a sad decline for Africa’s first republic.

See a short clip from the video here and Getty archives have still shots courtesy of Robert.

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Now that you are here: I am doing something crassly commercial here. I just signed up for Patreon. Patreon is a fundraising platform. In their words, “Patreon is an Internet-based platform that allows content creators to build their own subscription content service.” As you may notice in last few years, I have been posting very infrequently. But I want IP to go on for a long time and be sustainable. Linking a monetary value to a new post (not a ‘monthly salary’ — which is another way of doing Patreon) should give me a marginal incentive to write more. As far as the blog is concerned, nothing will change. No paywalls. Patreon is more useful for YouTubers and podcasters, but let’s see how it goes for me: https://www.patreon.com/iconicphotos