Freezing Moments in History

By Gerald Clarke

Photojournalists, aided by television, have come into their own again

> Young John Kennedy Jr. saluting the flag during his father's funeral procession.

> The South Viet Nam chief of police putting a bullet through the head of a Viet Cong prisoner.

> Lyndon Johnson lifting his shirt to show the scar from his gallstone operation.

> A gang of assassins running toward a Cairo reviewing stand to gun down Anwar Sadat.

The very mention of such images, as familiar to this generation as favorite lines of song or poetry were to those of the past, is enough to start a slide show deep within the brain, in those mysterious regions where memories are stored and dreams begin. More and more, history is recorded through pictures, and in the past two decades there has scarcely been an event worth noting that has not been photographed from a dozen different angles.

Centuries from now those images will be as vivid and immediate as they are today. "A powerful picture reaches into your heart and just rips it out," says Photographer Eddie Adams People will always have to hold fast to their hearts when they see, as if it were happening before them, Robert Kennedy bleeding on the floor of a hotel hallway or a spectral Neil Armstrong taking his first tentative step onto the moon.

It will be as if we ourselves were able to witness great Caesar's shock as he reels before the daggers inside the Roman Senate, Columbus' triumphant smile as he spies the dim outline of the New World, Washington's hope and anxiety as he crosses the icy Delaware to surprise the Hessians in their Christmas celebrations. "Can you imagine having had thousands of candid and honest pictures of Charlemagne, Kublai Khan or Abraham Lincoln?" asks Yoichi Okamoto, who was official photographer to Lyndon Johnson. Okamoto's excitement is catching. Photojournalism has known many great days since the first news shot 139 years ago, a panoramic view of the destruction caused by the great Hamburg fire of 1842; and the glories of the original LIFE the greatest of all picture magazines, may never be surpassed Despite the wonders of television, the still news photograph retains its special magic. "It is sometimes thought that the arrival of the moving picture made the still image obsolete," says Harold Evans, editor of the London Times. "I believe, quite to the contrary, that the still image has never been more powerful. It is a moment frozen in time; it preserves forever a finite fraction of the infinite time of the universe."

Television, in fact, has created a visual generation that never seems to tire of an arresting image. Viewers who watch an event on the nightly news want to see it again, to study it at their leisure in newspapers the next day and magazines the next week. "Television is going too fast. It doesn't lodge in the psyche the way a still does," says Sean Callahan, editor of American Photographer. TV can be like a slap in the face; it stings for a while and then goes away. But a still picture is like a stern lecture; it stays with you." An NBC television camera, for example, filmed the South Viet Nam police chief executing a Viet Cong prisoner. But it was Eddie Adams' still photograph that branded the senses and intensified opposition to the war. Boston's WNAC-TV recorded the sad drama of an antibusing rally in which a white man used the Stars and Stripes as a spear to attack a black man. But it was Stanley Forman's single, Pulitzer-prizewinning still in the Herald American that aroused national outrage and disgust. "I got the same stuff as Forman, but it didn't have the same impact " admits former TV Cameraman Richie Suskin.

In the past decade newspapers have given more space and more attention to pictures that tell a story. One day last year the once gray New York Times ran 160 photographs in a 96-page issue. Journalists specializing in pictures and design are suddenly turning up in the profession's management positions. At the same time, magazines like TIME and Newsweek have gone to great effort to illustrate news events with more and better color photography. "The picture has become an absolute necessity," says Hubert Henrotte, a co-founder of the Gamma-Liaison and Sygma picture agencies. "There has never been such a demand for photos to illustrate articles."

Thus for photographers, opportunities have never been so big or so varied--nor fees so high. Nakram Gadel Karim's photos of Sadat's murder brought him almost $50,000; Sebastiao Salgado Jr. earned an estimated $150,000 to $200,000 for his pictures of the attempted assassination of President Reagan. Over a year's time, respected photographers can make anywhere from $40,000 to $100,000. Although a beginner may have to scrounge to earn as little as $15,000, young people have found news photography a particular magnet: there are an estimated 20,000 newspaper photographers in the U.S. today, compared with half that number a decade ago. In much of the world there are almost as many cameras as people, moreover, and amateurs have captured some of the most important events of the past several years: the shooting of Pope John Paul II, a photograph that became TIME'S cover, May 25, 1981; the fiery fall of a 727 over San Diego; and the collapse of the Teton Dam in Idaho.

Except for occasional special assignments, newspaper photographers usually work a specific city or region. For them, a sure sense of direction and a fast car are as important as f-stops. Forman, who keeps a crackling police radio under his pillow won back-to-back Pulitzer Prizes by making sure he was in the right place at the right time. "My luck," he says, "is getting there."

The best magazine photographers go everywhere, shoot everything. For the most part they are represented by one of the six major agencies-- Sygma, Magnum, Gamma-Liaison, Sipa, Black Star and Contact-- which, for a fee (usually 40% to 50% of sales), play mother and salesman, lining up buyers throughout the world. Most of the agencies have their headquarters in Paris, and Paris is also home base for many photojournalists. "Geographically, it's the ideal place to be," says Robert Pledge, president of Contact. "It's halfway between Washington Moscow, Hamburg and Madrid."

Good photographers are among the last survivors of a more swashbuckling era of journalism. As the news has become more complicated, a good reporter does much of his best work at his desk sifting through piles of research to understand and make to his readers the likes of SALT and MIRV and je skirmishes of the Battle of the Budget. A photographer, on other hand, must be in the heat of the action, whether it is a or a natural disaster-- or a budget meeting. "If you are a reporter you can be behind the front line and still get your job done," says Alfred Eisenstaedt, who was one of the ornaments of LIFE's golden era. "But a photographer has to be right there "

That kind of involvement requires a special temperament Occasionally photographers are a little crazy, and almost always they are obsessed. Often too they are pushy and, by some stan-lards, obnoxious. Freelancer Matthew Naythons was so upset by the conduct of his colleagues during Rosalynn Carter's 1979 visit to refugee camps in Thailand that he simply abandoned the assignment. "The conduct of the photographers was morally reprehensible, he recalls with anger. "They were literally trampling dying babies to get better shots." Frequently, however, they are also brave and daring, in an old-fashioned way that is rare nowadays. In Viet Nam, some 30 cameramen were killed or listed as missing covering history's most photographed war More photojournalists died than generals," says Magnum Executive Raymond Depardon. Many of them took their credo from Robert Capa, the legendary photographer best remembered for his stunning LIFE shots of the troops landing on Dday, "If your pictures aren't good enough," he used to say, "you aren't cose enough." In 1954, Capa became the first photographer killed during the Indo-China War.

But even the most reckless photographers draw a line between the acceptable and the unacceptable risk. "When I get hit I hope it's because I'm unlucky, not stupid," says Naythons who has been known to wear a bulletproof vest. "I'm never worried about the bullet with my name on it. I'm worried about the one that says, 'To Whom It May Concern.' "

With the slightest prodding, photographers will brag about their exploits and their cunning in lengthy and often colorful detail. But some famous pictures, like Adams' shot of the Saigon execution are totally unplanned. Then working for the Associated Press, he went with an NBC crew to a pagoda where fighting had been reported. The South Vietnamese had just recaptured the building, but as the newsmen were leaving, they spotted a young prisoner being led away, his arms tied behind his back. An officer, whom they later identified as Brigadier General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, suddenly appeared and reached for his pistol Adams fast on the draw himself, raised his camera and automatically clicked the shutter. He did not fully realize what he had until a colleague wired, "This is the Greatest Picture of the Viet Nam War!" Or as Evans now explains: "That was the most important gunshot of the war, not because it was heard round the world, but because it was seen round the world."

The best pictures are usually those that show what Freelancer Henry Grossman calls "revealing juxtapositions."

With advanced electronic cameras, which automatically focus and determine light settings, almost anyone can film action: a fire, a raging crowd or an erupting volcano. Only someone with a special eye can catch those odd and revealing juxtapositions that give meaning to the obvious and jejune. The portraits of an exploding Mount St. Helens were awesomely beautiful; but it was San Jose Mercury News Photographer George Wedding's aerial picture of Andy, an eleven-year-old who had been asphyxiated by volcanic ash as he lay in the back of a pickup, that conveyed the awful power of that awful beauty.

In a sense, photojournalists today are competing against all the news pictures that have ever been taken. Their ability to bring back images of war, disaster and suffering has had over time, a desensitizing effect. Says Floris de Bonneville, Gamma's picture editor in Paris: "The real revolution in photojournalism is in the readers' fatigue. They are no longer shocked or surprised by anything." Contact Partner David Burnett, 34, understood this when he went to Cambodia to photograph refugees. "It is easy to make pictures of people starving," he says "I wanted to take a picture that people would look at again." His shot of a weary and resigned Cambodian refugee holding an infant was an expressionist masterpiece that was judged the best photograph in 1980 by the World Press Photo Association.

In the very early days of photojournalism, picture takers often trailed behind writers, like baggage carriers in the African bush. "Just look over our heads, Mr. Secretary," a cameraman once called up to Secretary of State Dean Acheson, who was standing with other diplomats on a balcony. "We always do " replied Acheson. Now the roles are more nearly equal "When I hear snooty remarks about photojournalists, I think of one of their greatest achievements--objective presentation of war and its consequences " says Evans. "Their pictures have told many truths, and they have been prepared to risk everything to capture an image and hold it fast forever." In war and peace, photojournalists are recording life and death, joy and sadness. History now has eyes as well as ears.

By Gerald Clarke Reportedby Elizabeth Rudulph and Janice C. Simpson/New York

With reporting by Elizabeth Rudolph, Janice Simpson

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.