Showing posts with label Great Life Photographers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Great Life Photographers. Show all posts

Monday, November 15, 2021

Gallery Photographers Margaret Bourke-White and Alfred Eisenstaedt Included in “Masters of Photography" Exhibit

 

Via The San Diego Union Tribune

November 14, 2021


"Finally opening one year after its scheduled debut, the San Diego Museum of Art’s new photography exhibition will display some of the medium’s most recognizable and influential names, including Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Aaron Siskind and Alfred Eisenstaedt.

“Things as They Are: City, Society and Conflict” covers everything from a chilling shot of Nazi minister of propaganda Joseph Goebbels by Alfred Eisenstaedt in 1933. Two of Bourke-White’s prints are on view in the “Things as They Are: City, Society and Conflict” section. One is a 1951 image of the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier Boxer, stationed in San Diego, the other is of the Buchenwald concentration camp liberation in 1945. "

Monday, May 25, 2020

John Loengard 1934 - 2020


John Loengard: Brassai's Eye, Paris, 1981


LIFE magazine photographer John Loengard passed away May 24 in New York City at age 86.
 
John Loengard was born in New York City in 1934, and received his first assignment from LIFE magazine in 1956, while still an undergraduate at Harvard College. He joined the magazine's staff in 1961, and in 1978 was instrumental in its re-birth as a monthly, serving as picture editor until 1987. Under his guidance in 1986, LIFE received the first award for "Excellence in Photography" given by the American Society of Magazine Editors.
 After LIFE magazine suspended weekly publication in 1972, Loengard joined Time Incorporated’s Magazine Development Group as the picture editor of LIFE Special Reports. He was also picture editor of People magazine during its conception in 1973 and the first three months of its publication in 1974
In 2005, American Photo magazine identified Loengard as “One of the 100 most influential people in photography,” and in 2018 he was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame.
In 1996, Loengard received a Lifetime Achievement Award "in recognition of his multifaceted contributions to photojournalism," from Photographic Administrators Inc.

Loengard authored ten books, including: Pictures Under Discussion, which won the Ansel Adams Award for book photography in 1987, Celebrating the Negative, and Georgia O'Keeffe at Ghost Ranch. His book, LIFE Photographers: What They Saw, was named one of the year's ten top books for 1998 by the New York Times

John Loengard: Henry Moore's 'Sheep Piece", 1983


John Loengard: Georgia O'Keeffe with basket, 1966



 


Thursday, October 3, 2013

BILL EPPRIDGE - 1938 - 2013 - AN AMERICAN TREASURE



 



Bill Eppridge, Santa Fe, 2009



 


 
Bill Eppridge was one of the most accomplished photojournalists of the Twentieth Century and  captured some of the most significant moments in American history: he covered wars, political campaigns, heroin addiction, the arrival of the Beatles in the United States, Vietnam, Woodstock, the summer and winter Olympics, and perhaps the most dramatic moment of his career - the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy in Los Angeles. His most recent project was to record the disappearance of the American Family Farm and he was as passionate about this subject as he was any other.
 
It would be difficult to overstate the importance of Bill Eppridge's visual contribution to American History. A recent retrospective of his work at Monroe gallery was titled: “Bill Eppridge: An American Treasure”. He was indeed a treasure, and he is already missed.  --Sidney and Michelle Monroe


Bill Eppridge is a sobering reminder of the necessity of a common history to a civilized society.

 
 








Reposted from Bill Eppridge's good friend Dave Burnett.

It's hard to write or even to read the words about the passing of Bill Eppridge. A little older than I was, to me and my generation (the late sixty somethings) Bill was always one of those guys to whom we could point and realize that THIS GUY was the photo journalist you wanted to be. Tough, dedicated, a rare sense of humor, willing to share and guide (he once gave me one of the kindest beratings over some pictures I had in a round-up piece to which LIFE had assigned both of us..) it was never snarky, since he didn't need to be snarky about anything. Even when he was dealt a lousy hand with health issues, he kept motoring ahead, and was never, ever, without a Nikon of some sort to catch that inevitable fleeting moment. I only once got to share a fishing line with him, in Thomas Mangelsen's back yard. He kept trying to show me how to throw the line in so that some clueless fish might forget ...to reject me. I have a feeling that the 'fishing Bill' was a whole different side of him, and sorry I missed it. He and Adrienne were a great couple. The last time we hung with them was in NY when Bill, Melanie Burford and I judged the N Y Press photographers contest a year and a half ago. It was a blast to see what was, and wasn't acceptable to Bill. He had high standards for his craft, and was probably tougher on himself than anyone else. Bill had one of those great grins: it was somewhere between shit-eating and cat swallowing canary. In fact it might have even been canary swallows cat. It was as if there was always one more story to tell, and he'd just heard the punch line, and wanted to be the one to share it. I'm sorry we won't have him around to tell some of those stories. He was a master at it in all ways.



Thursday, May 2, 2013

"Life: The great photographers" exhibition in Rome



artDaily

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



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



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


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



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




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



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



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



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



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


Via Artdaily.org May 1, 2013


Thursday, February 16, 2012

Frank Sinatra by John Dominis

Frank Sinatra and Jackie Gleason, 1965
John Dominis: Frank Sinatra and Jackie Gleason, 1965
©Time Inc

Via La Lettre de la Photographie



In mid-20th century, performers would let magazine photographers get close. Audrey Hepburn did so with Mark Shaw in 1953. James Dean let Dennis Stock hang out in 1955. Leonard McCombe shadowed Kim Novak in 1956. John Dominis seized his opportunity with Frank Sinatra in 1965.

John Dominis: It was Sinatra’s 50th birthday, and what he probably thought was that he was going to have a long interview with a writer and maybe a few formal pictures. Often with famous people, when it comes to actually taking real pictures of their lifestyle, they balk. They don't want a guy hanging around every minute of the day and night. But that's what we wanted to do.

I went down to Florida, where Sinatra was performing. I met him and hung around backstage. After the show he’d eat with a bunch of friends. For about a week I just hung around. People would come by all the time, and he'd say, “Hey, John, take a picture of old Joe and me.” So I'd go snap and take this snapshot.

We went out to Las Vegas, and at some point on the plane I said, “Everything's great, but I'd like to start getting some of the stuff we hear about. You have parties late at night with some of your old buddies and things like that.” So he invited me to a party. He had all these girls there and guys up in his suite, and they drank, and he jerked the tablecloth out from under all the dinner dishes on a table. I'd never seen that trick really done. It worked. I was amazed. He didn't spill any dishes on the floor. I shot all this, and he got smashed and ended up singing in the closet with Jerry Lewis. Good stuff. I took three months with Sinatra. That’s unheard of nowadays.

(Interview dated October 27, 1993 was printed in full in the Bullfinch Press book, LIFE Photographers: What They Saw, in 1998. These photographs  ©Time Inc., are courtesy The LIFE Gallery of Photography)

More photos here

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

A Storyteller Is Seen With New Eyes


Grey Villet:"Slo-Pokes", Drag Racing In Moline, Illinois, 1957



Via The Wall Street Journal


"(Grey)  "Villet really fits into that ICP/Cornell Capa tradition—not only with photojournalism but this real interest in ordinary people and their lives."
 --Erin Barnett, International Center of Photography


"My sense of his power as a photographer was very great, and I was beginning to lose all hope that I was going to get this beautiful work out there."
--Barbara Villet, Grey's widow

"Villet shot for LIFE in both its weekly and reinvented monthly iterations between 1955 and 1985, producing some 40 full-length features of remarkable emotional and intellectual range—from a 1962 visit inside Synanon House, a controversial drug-treatment facility in California, to "The Lash of Success," an allegorical look at a Chicago furniture-chain owner whose abuse of power ultimately destroyed what he'd built. His mid-'70s essay about a hospital nurse, "More Than Compassion," like W. Eugene Smith's "Country Doctor," is a striking examination of life and death. Yet Smith's 1948 essay is legendary, and Villet's is hardly known."

"Grey was able to tell a story about something people necessarily hadn't gotten their minds around," said David Friend, who worked with Villet at LIFE as a reporter and picture editor. "It's not necessarily about [Henri] Cartier-Bresson's 'decisive moment'; it's about the collision or dovetailing of images that add up to a greater whole."

Among his own kind," Mr. Friend said of his former colleague, "he was revered."

"His work is every bit as important as those who were so well known," said Sidney Monroe, whose Santa Fe-based gallery represents Villet's estate."

Full article here.
(Subscription required)



Wall Street Journal slide show
(No subscription required to view)

Wall Street Journal Interactive: Watching and Listening: The Work of Photojournalist Grey Villet
View Grey Villet's photographs during the AIPAD Photography Show March 28 - April 1 at Monroe Gallery of Photography Booth #419.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Happy 75th Birthday, Life Magazine

75 years of Life magazine

Life Magazine was first published 75 years ago tomorrow, November 23.


The magazine, once criticised as being "for people who can't read," became an instant hit in 1936 and went on to feature defining images of the Second World War, natural disasters, the lives of Hollywood movie stars and the turbulent events of the 1960s. At its peak in the 1940s it sold 13.5 million copies a week.

The magazine was last published in 2007 and it is now a website. The website editors looked back over more than 2,200 cover photographs to chose their 75 favourites, which included portraits of Winston Churchill, Marilyn Monroe and a notoriously racy cover of Sophia Loren.

The magazine's place in the history of  photojournalism is considered its most important contribution to publishing.

The 75 Best LIFE Covers of All Time   

The 75 Best LIFE photographs

The Connecticut Post: Ridgefield man brought LIFE magazine to life



Related: Visit Monroe Gallery of Photography to view original prints by Margaret Bourke-White, Robert Capa, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Bill Eppridge, Carl Mydans, and many other great LIFE photographers.

Monday, February 7, 2011

Iconic Monday: The Story Behind Hansel Mieth's Cranky Monkey


©I Like To Watch
The Blog of Writer and Editor David Schonauer




Mieth called the picture "The monkey on my back."


Last week I focused on the iconic photos of the first chimp in space. This Monday I thought I'd stay with man's ancestors and look at one of my favorite iconic Life magazine pictures—Hansel Mieth's portrait of a runaway rhesus monkey in Puerto Rico.

The image became a Life favorite after it's original publication in 1938. Over the years it's been reprinted in books countless times and sold as a poster. Mieth took many fine pictures for Life, but this is the one she became known for—which is she called the photo "the monkey on my back."

The explanation for its lasting impact? Probably the monkey's expression, which has been variously described as heartbreaking, sullen, and just plain P-Oed. I would go with P-Oed, but for all I know this may be the default expression of rhesus monkeys in repose. Let's agree that the face has left generations of viewers a bit...uneasy.

According to Mieth, a Life writer took one look at the image and said, "That's Henry Luce!" When a mean-looking monkey reminds you of your boss, you know it's trouble. Maybe when we look at Mieth's monkey we all simply see a face we're familiar with.


Mieth at work for Life, 1938


The story behind the picture is interesting, but not nearly as interesting as Mieth herself, and that's really why I wanted to write about her monkey today. Her life's story has been told in documentary called Hansel Mieth: Vagabond Photographer, which aired on PBS in 2003. As the title suggests, she was something of an iconoclast, and she never fit easily into the world of middle-class values embraced, extolled, and (in her case) enforced by Life magazine's editors. But as John Loengard, the legendary former director of photography (and foremost historian) of Life has written, the tale of Mieth's life and career was also a love.

She was born Johanna Mieth in Oppelsbohm, Bermany in 1909, but her father nicknamed her Hansel. At age 15 she left home with her teenage lover, Otto Hagel, began rambling through Europe on a romantic jaunt that wold last nearly 60 years.




"We lived with a goup of teenagers under a bridge over the Danube river," she once told Loengard, who interviewed her for his book Life Photograpers: What They Saw. "I had a guitar, and Otto had a violin. In the 1920s you could get along that way in Austria." Once they stayed in a monastery in Yugoslavia for six weeks, Mieth dressed as a boy in short leather pants. They eventually started making a little money taking pictures and writing short articles for newspapers. When Hilter rose to power, Hagel went to America on a boat carrying canaries. She followed later. Eventually they found themselves in Depression-era California, continuing their photographic work by documenting amigrant farm laborers. Mieth started working for the Works Progress Administration.

"We were idealistic liberals," she told Loengard. "And what happens to liberals? Nothing. They lose their shirt."

In 1936, David Hulburd, the head of the Time Inc. office in San Francisco, asked Mieth if she wanted to work for Henry Luce, who was not an idealistic liberal, as a Life stringer. She shot a story on a sheep farm in Red Bluff, California, and one of her pictures made the magazine's cover. In 1937 they offered her a staff job. "I must have been a little hungry or something, because I said OK," she told Loengard. She bcame the magazine's second female staff photographer, the first being Margaret Bourke-White, whom Mieth befriended when she moved (with Hagel) to New York. "Once she admired a black velvet dress with red heart buttons that I was wearing," she recalled. "She came back a little later and handed me a package and said we should be friends together. When I unwrapped it, I found a nice red compact in a heart shape made of good leather, just like the buttons I had on my dress."


Otto Hagel and Hansel Mieth (undated)

Hagel became a well known photographer in his own right. He and Mieth were, as she put it later, happily "living in sin" when Life editors, who felt they needed to protect the magazine's image, started looking at them with expressions somewhat like that of her rhesus monkey. To appease the editors, Mieth and Hagel applied for a marriage license. While they were waiting for it, Robert Capa appeared at the magazine's office saying his visa had been cancelled. He had to leave the country...or marry an American citizen. He had a girl willing to do him the favor, and they all got married at the same time in a quickie ceremony.

In 1941, said Mieth, "life in New York was a little too—if not hectic, at least it didn't make a great deal of sense." Mieth and Hagel moved back to California. It was Mieth's idea, and Hagel said, "Where you go, I go." She continued working for Life, while he shot for other magazines. FDR was an admirer of Hagel's documentary work. Once, when Hagel was in Cuba on assignment, Mieth's phone rang. "It was Steve Early, Roosevelt's press secretary. He said the president wants to speak to Otto. I said Otto is not here....Five minutes later, the phone rang again, and it was Roosevelt himself, and he said, 'I want to speak to my boy.'"

"Your boy's not here," Mieth told the president.

In the 1950s, Mieth and Hagel refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee; that helped bring an end to Mieth's prickly relationship with Life. They had a ranch in Santa Rosa, California, where they raised livestock. Hagel died in 1973. Mieth died in 1998.

It was back in 1938 that she went to Puerto Rico to shoot a Life story on a Harvard Medical School project to study freed rhesus monkeys. One day, a boy came running up to her and said that a monkey had gotten away and was in the water nearby. Mieth pursued the animal. "I came down, and that monkey was really going hell-bent for something," Mieth recalled. "I said, 'I better go in and get him,' [and] I threw my Rolleiflex on my back and swam out." The monkey, standing on a corral reef, looked at her. "I don't think he liked me, but he sat on that corral reef there, and I took about a dozen shots," she told Loengard.

Mieth took plenty of pictures on the assignment, but the magazine ran only the one that looked like Henry Luce. Loengard asked Mieth if she thought the monkey looked like Luce, and she replied thoughtfully, "I didn't see Luce that much. He had lots of other things to do rather than talk with photographers. The photographers were a low group of animals then. But I suppose it does in a way. It all depends on what kind of mood you are in. To me it looks like the monkey's depicting the state of the world at the time."

--David Schonauer


Related: Women Who Shot The 20th Century

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Bill Eppridge - History in the Making

Bill Eppridge - History in the Making
DOUBLE EXPOSURE

By Lynne Eodice

Jan 11, 2011

All photos by Bill Eppridge.

In a notable career shooting primarily for Life and Sports Illustrated, Bill Eppridge has covered wars, political campaigns, heroin addiction, the arrival of the Beatles in the United States, the summer and winter Olympics, and perhaps the most dramatic moment of his career--the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy in Los Angeles. His photography has won numerous awards and has appeared in traveling exhibits throughout the world. He has taught photojournalism at Yale University, the Missouri Photojournalism Workshop, Barnstorm: The Eddie Adams Workshop, Rich Clarkson's Photography at the Summit, and Sportsshooter Workshop.



 When his family lived in Richmond, Virginia at the end of WWII, a man with a pony came to the Eppridge household one day and offered his photographic services. Bill Eppridge, who was about 10 at the time, got out his Brownie Starflash 620 camera and posed with it. "I started thinking, 'this guy doesn't have a bad job. He gets to travel, meets some interesting people and he's even got a pony.'" As a young boy, he waited for the mailman to deliver Life magazine every week, and always enjoyed the photographs by David Douglas Duncan, Robert Capa, and Henri Cartier-Bresson. "I was fascinated by this work and I felt that it affected the people who looked at these pictures." He was also moved by Joe Rosenthal's image of the flag being raised at Iwo Jima. "Over the years, I thought there was some power with this medium. If you can do a couple of good things for people in your life, then you've lived a good life," he remarks.


Joining the Ranks of his Heroes

After graduating from high school, Eppridge decided he wanted to be an archaeologist and attended the University of Toronto. He also took pictures for the Varsity, the campus newspaper. "By the end of my second year there, I was Director of Photography," he remembers. His grades in school began to slip, and he realized that photography was really where he wanted to be. One of the faculty members at the college advised him to go to the University of Missouri, as it was the best school for journalism.



Ethel Kennedy Leans Over Robert F. Kennedy As He Lies Wounded on Floor of Ambassador Hotel Kitchen, June, 1968 © Time

Twice, he won the National College Picture Competition sponsored by the National Press Photographers' Association (NPPA) and the University of Missouri. "In both cases, the first prize was an Encyclopedia Britannica and a week's internship at Life magazine," Eppridge says. "During those weeks, I met some of the people whose pictures I had seen as a child." One of his winning images was the result of a lucky accident, taken when a Columbia, Missouri newspaper needed a cover for its farm supplement. Eppridge agreed to take pictures of an impending tornadic storm, and pulled his car up alongside a farm just as the sky was turning black. A farm horse, which he describes as "an old plug," approached him. Eppridge slipped, making a sudden move that startled the horse, and it ran away. Shooting quickly, he got one dramatic picture of this off-white horse galloping against a dark, foreboding sky. "The old plug looked just like a thoroughbred," he relates. The image, titled, 'Stormy,' also won first place Pictorial in the NPPA's Pictures of The Year competition-- Eppridge credits it with starting his career. (And fortunately, the horse was fine, as the storm never really touched down.)


He says, "Most of the Missouri grads at the time migrated to National Geographic." Thus, he made inroads at both NGS and Life. His first assignment for NGS was a nine-month trip around the world with the International School of America. The trek started in Japan and moved across the continents to Europe. "I didn't attend classes like they did, so I was free to roam. It was a great way to get introduced to this profession and to the world outside," he recalls.


A Ground Floor Opportunity

He moved on to Life following the advice of his Picture Editor at NGS, Bill Garrett, who was also a graduate of Missouri. "He was a brilliant man," exclaims Eppridge, "who always had a very good sense of what was going on in the world." NGS had wanted Eppridge to remain in Washington while they laid the story out, and put him to work in the magazine's color lab as a technician. Once the story was laid out, the editor, Melville Bell Grosvenor wanted to make him a staff photographer. "I felt really wonderful about this," he says. "But a few days later, Garrett told me, 'you've got to get out of here. They want you on staff and you can't do that.'" Garrett told the young man that the world was, in essence, starting to "blow up," with unrest in Latin America and Southeast Asia. "You've got to photograph those places," he advised Eppridge. "You won't get a chance to do that if you stay here."

One of the judges of a picture competition that Eppridge had won was Roy Rowan, the Life Bureau Chief in Chicago. "I went to New York blindly with a portfolio under my arm," Eppridge says. "I didn't make any phone calls and didn't set anything up." He thought Life was a little out of reach, but hoped to get a free lunch from one of his friends there. "I went over to the Time-Life building and was standing at the corner of 51st and 6th Avenue. This voice behind me says, 'Eppridge, is that you?' and I turned around and said, 'Roy Rowan, is that you?'" As it turned out, Rowan was the new Director of Photography at Life, and told Eppridge they were looking for young photographers. He had an opportunity to start shooting for the magazine that afternoon, but since he hadn't brought his camera with him, he began his career with the venerable publication after moving to New York several weeks later. "The first assignment I shot ran in the magazine, and so did the next several stories," he says--an impressive feat, considering that Life had a very high "kill factor" at the time. Soon Life made Eppridge a staff photographer.

His assignments with the magazine marked some very important points in history, beginning with coverage of several wars in the early sixties. "I went to Panama, Santa Domingo, and Managua for those revolutions," Eppridge notes. "I spent some time in Mississippi when the bodies of three slain civil rights workers were found, and I was in Vietnam. It taught me that war ain't glorious at all--not made for human consumption." He also did a story on heroin addiction, where he lived with a pair of addicts in New York City for about three months, in an area known as Needle Park. "They were just being themselves because that's the way I work," he says. "I prefer to be a speck on the wall." The resulting story won several awards, including the National Headliners Award that year. It was also the inspiration for Al Pacino's first film, "Panic in Needle Park."

All in all, he's covered a wide range of stories for Life, including spending a week with Jonas Salk, the inventor of the Polio vaccine. He photographed the summer Olympics in Mexico, and spent time with Dick Butkus during his rookie year with the Chicago Bears. He was also the first photojournalist to be allowed to travel on tour with Lyndon B. Johnson during his presidency. "I was on Air Force One for several days," he comments. Eppridge also covered civil rights issues, and was with the family of James Chaney after his body was found, and photographed his funeral. "I was able to show how that family dealt with a terrible event."



Rock n' Roll History

In 1964, the magazine sent him on assignment on what would become a legendary rock band's historic arrival to the U.S. "One morning my boss said, 'Look, we've got a bunch of British musicians coming into town. They're called the Beatles.'" Eppridge, who wasn't really a rock n' roll fan, recalled that Life had recently done a story about a phenomenon known as Beatlemania--"The Beatles were running down the street with little girls screaming and running after them." His orders were to cover their arrival in New York from a unique vantage point where nobody else happened to be, so Eppridge went to JFK International Airport to scout out locations. "I wandered around and found a spot that I liked," he says. "So I set up there, leaned against a pole, and waited." Before long, another photographer headed in his direction, apparently also seeking a good location, and set his camera bag down about 20 feet from Eppridge. He made acquaintance with this photographer, who turned out to be the Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Eddie Adams, on assignment from Associated Press.

"I decided I liked the guy, although he was competition," says Eppridge of that initial meeting. They discussed where the ideal spot would be to shoot the British group's arrival, and both concluded that it would be best to be on the plane, behind the Beatles as they came out the door, photographing them and the huge, uproarious crowd below. When the plane landed, the door opened, "and out came this beautiful Pan Am stewardess, followed by the Beatles, who were dressed like proper young men," he remembers. And lo and behold, a photographer followed them out the door of the plane. "Eddie and I just looked at each other," Eppridge says. It turned out that the photographer was Harry Benson, who was working for one of the British newspapers at the time.

Eppridge covered the first few days that the Beatles were in New York, and learned a lot about music. "These were four very fine young gentlemen, and great fun to be around," he says. After he introduced himself to Ringo, who consulted with John, the group asked what he wanted them to do while being photographed for Life. "I'm not going to ask you to do a thing," was Eppridge's reply. "I just want to be there." He was invited to come up to their hotel room and "stick with them." The resulting photos from this story were on display at the Smithsonian for an entire year. That exhibit is still traveling and is currently in Liverpool, England.



A Pivotal Moment in Time

In 1966, he was assigned to cover Bobby Kennedy's political campaigns. "He endorsed candidates who had helped his brother," notes Eppridge. "But he was also testing the waters to see how his own candidacy would go over in '68." That year, Life asked him to cover Kennedy's campaign, beginning with the primaries. At that time, the magazine assigned one staffer to each major candidate. On June 5, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, he was instructed by his boss to "stay as close as you can to Bobby. The editors here feel that if he wins California--which appears likely--he will probably be the next President of the United States." Back then, he says, you could do all your dealings directly with the candidate, no middleman involved. As opposed to the massive security today, Bobby Kennedy only had one bodyguard, Bill Barry.


Kennedy assured Eppridge that he would be part of his immediate group, which meant that wherever the Democratic candidate went, Eppridge wouldn't be far behind. "When he came off the stage, we would form an arrowhead-shaped wedge of photographers who would go through a crowd," he relates. "If people got pushed out of the way, then it was the press who did it and not the candidate." Being in the "pocket" of the wedge also gave Senator Kennedy freedom to move around and shake hands. "We had that wedge formed at Barry's direction to go out of a different exit," he says. "Bobby came off the stage, and came down to Barry, who said 'Senator, this way,' pointing across the room." But Bobby insisted on going out through the kitchen, which was the way they had entered. Again, Barry told him to go across the room, but the Senator refused, turned, and entered the kitchen.

"We couldn't scramble fast enough," Eppridge remembers. "We all headed towards the kitchen, but were behind him about 15 feet." As he tried to catch up, he went through the kitchen doors, and heard the sound of gunshots. It was eight shots. Thinking quickly, he grabbed the television cameraman and shoved him forward to utilize his light. Among the thoughts Eppridge had at that moment was a very loud and clear one: "You are not just a photojournalist, you're a historian."

Juan Romero, a busboy with whom Kennedy had been shaking hands, now cradled the Senator's head in his arms. Eppridge had time to capture only a few frames. "The first one was out of focus," he says. "In the second one, Romero is looking down at Kennedy, and in the third one, Romero was looking up with a pleading look." After that, the scene became bedlam. "You think you're in a position to help," he muses. "There were doctors in the room, and I knew I could only do my job because there was nothing I could do to help the Senator. So I just concentrated on doing my job."

Eppridge has published two photographic books on Bobby Kennedy. The first, titled The Last Campaign, was published in 1993 on the 25th anniversary of Senator Kennedy's death. The most recent one is entitled A Time It Was: Bobby Kennedy In The Sixties, (Abrams, June 2008) and includes never-before-published color photographs from the campaign that had been lost for 40 years. "What I would like people to know about is the freedom we (photographers) had and the ability we were given to tell the truth," Eppridge comments. "The press is controlled in such a way today that you almost never see the real person you're photographing. You're taking pictures of what their handlers want you to see."




Protecting Natural Resources

"After Bobby was killed, of course, I didn't do any more politics," he says. Instead, he took on more outdoor assignments; hunting, fishing, and environmental photography. Before they folded, Life let a lot of photographers go, but kept Eppridge. When the magazine ceased publication in December 1972, he moved on to Sports Illustrated, where he is still on the masthead. "I liked SI because they were doing the types of stories I enjoyed," he says. The publication sent him to Africa to do a story on poaching, which he describes as "interestingly scary." He's also covered six America's Cup competitions and five Winter Olympics. "The best-run games were in Sarajevo," Eppridge observes. "That was before the war destroyed that country." He describes his work with SI as "Sports with no balls," as he's no longer fond of shooting baseball, basketball, or football. "I prefer to do something that I've never done before," he remarks. "Rather than specialize, I'm a generalist."

When asked about advice for photographers starting out today, Eppridge emphasizes telling the truth. "I believe our world is at a time right now in which it should be documented completely." He says we should all be protectors of our environment and heritage. "If we can influence people with photographs, maybe we'll be able to maintain our planet."

See Bill Eppridge's historic photographs at Booth A-102 during Photo LA, January 13 - 17, 2011,.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

BORN DECEMBER 6: ALFRED EISENSTAEDT

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We celebrate and remember Alfred Eisenstaedt on the 112th anniversary of his birth. We were privileged to have first met Eisie in 1986, and he inspired and informed our path as gallerists specializing in photojournalism.

Renowned as the father of modern photojournalism, Alfred Eisenstaedt’s career as a preeminent photojournalist spanned eight decades. Born in West Prussia on December 6, 1898, “Eisie”, as he preferred to be called, began taking photographs in Germany in 1914. As a pioneer in his field, “Eisie” had few rules to follow. Diminutive in stature, he worked with minimal equipment and was known for an aggressive yet invisible style of working. Regarded as an innovator of available light photography, Eisenstaedt dispensed with flash photography early on in order to preserve the ambiance of natural lighting.

He photographed throughout Europe, Africa, and the Middle East until he came to LIFE magazine in 1936. As one of the four original staff photographers for LIFE, “Eisie” covered over 2,500 assignments and created 86 covers for the magazine. Acknowledged as one of the most published photojournalists in the world, he took photographs at the first meeting of Hitler and Mussolini, of Albert Einstein teaching at Princeton, Churchill’s campaign and re-election, children at a puppet theater in Paris, Marilyn Monroe at home, and hundreds of other significant people and events around the world. He was an editor’s dream, and his work had what became known as “Eisie’s eye”. Portrait assignments became one of  his specialties, and in the process he accumulated many little-known secrets about his subjects.

V-J Day, Times Square, 1945”, in which a sailor, elated because the war is over, kisses a nurse amidst a New York crowd, will perhaps always be Alfred Eisenstaedt’s signature photograph. Acclaimed as one of the Ten Greatest Images of Photojournalism, it reflects “Eisie’s” keen sense of spontaneity. Many books have been written about Eisenstaedt and his career; and he authored several books including: People, Witness To Our Time, Eisenstaedt On Eisenstaedt, and Remembrances. It is unlikely that anyone could have lived during the last 50 years without having been exposed to the photographs of Alfred Eisenstaedt. “Eisie” worked almost ceaselessly until his death in 1995, even photographing President Clinton and Family in 1993.

Alfred Eisenstaedt possessed the unique talent to capture a story in a single, tell-all moment. The photographer’s job, he once wrote, “is to find and catch the storytelling moment.” “Eisie” received awards and recognition far too numerous to list. His photographs have been exhibited in prestigious museums and galleries throughout the world and are in the permanent collections of many important art institutions.

Accolades continued after his death. The Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University inaugurated the Alfred Eisenstaedt Awards for Photography. The City of New York renamed Grand Street “Alfred Eisenstaedt Place” for the occasion of a retrospective exhibition organized by Sidney S. Monroe in 1998/1999. And in December, 1999 the on-line magazine Digital Journalist named Eisenstaedt “The Photojournalist of the Century”. The career of this legendary photographer was celebrated with the exhibition “The Eye of Eisenstaedt” at Monroe Gallery July 7 – October 1, 2006.


Alfred Eisenstaedt passed away on August 25, 1995 - just 11 days after the 50th anniversary of his iconic photography "VJ-Day in Times Square".  His obituary in The New York Times was titled "Alfred Eisenstaedt, Photographer of the Defining Moment, Is Dead at 96".



Related: Alfred Eisenstaedt Master Photographer, 1983 BBC series on YouTube

New Yorker Magazine: Photo Booth: Alfred Eisenstaedt’s Century in Photographs






In March, 2010, Sidney and Michelle Monroe received the Alfred Eisenstaedt Award for Excellence in Photography "for their passion and dedication to the LIFE photographers".


Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Looking Back At The Great 'Life' Photographers

Looking Back At The Great 'Life' Photographers

©National Public Radio
by Claire O'Neill



LIFE really has an unfair advantage when it comes to curating art books. Because, at least in the photography category, they have one of the most extensive, impressive archives from which to cull. For decades the pages of Life were home to the best photographers; and it was just about every amateur photographer's aspiration to be in those pages.

Some of the photos you've seen: Like the sailor kissing the nurse on V-J Day in Times Square. Others you may not know, but can instantly appreciate: Kennedy and baby Caroline, Jackie Robinson rounding third base at the World Series, Picasso painting with light — and in a bathtub.

So add The Great Life Photographers to your list of holiday gift books. The paperback edition of the 2004 visual encyclopedia was released in October and contains 600 pages of Life's best photography. Daunted by the prospect of making an even smaller edit, I asked Barbara Baker Burrows, director of photography at Life books to pick some of her favorites. Her edit and commentary constitute this gallery. But you can see more Life classics on their website.


Alfred Eisenstaedt: Children at a puppet theater, Paris, 1963



Margaret Bourke-White: At the time of the Louisville Flood, 1936


Ralph Morse: Jackie Robinson rounding Third base during World series against the Yankees, 1955


See the slide show here.


Credit: From 'The Great Life Photographers'/Time Inc./Selected and with commentary by Barbara Baker Burrows, Director of Photography