Years before I first went into journalism I already had a strong interest in the field and in news photography. I was later able to combine the two in my work. Growing up in the Washington, D.C. area was also an asset for the opportunities it afforded an amateur.
One of my objectives was to capture people in the public arena differently from their ordinary appearance in news photos. Primarily through luck and timing, I was able to do that the first time I took a picture of such a person.
Photographed Robert Kennedy at Virginia home
He was Robert Kennedy and it was May 1966 at Hickory Hill, the Kennedy family brick home in McLean, Virginia, which was initially purchased by his brother, John F. Kennedy. Robert and Ethel Kennedy hosted an annual charity pet show for a half-way house in Washington.
I brought a Polaroid instant camera which I’d been given as a tenth birthday present. While wandering around the grounds of Hickory Hill that day after we arrived, I spotted Kennedy walking by himself and seeming somewhat shy and even a little ill at ease. A man approached him and began talking and that’s what gave me the chance to snap a quick photo.
It was the only picture I took of him. In my haste to remove the self-developing image from the camera, I pulled the chemical agent, fixer, and negative exposure papers out at an uneven angle and prevented the bottom of the picture from developing properly. When I peeled off the film’s components, I saw I had unintentionally cut off most of Kennedy’s hands.
That seemed a minor drawback and I kept the picture in my collection. Two years later, Kennedy, the junior U.S. senator from New York, was assassinated in Los Angeles while campaigning for the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination. I eventually had a more professional reproduction of the photo made from the original Polaroid image.
The experience then and others afterward made me want to take more photos. In the late 1970s and early 1980s it was easier to move around Washington--before additional attempts on the life of public officials and of course terrorist attacks.
Easier to photograph past presidents
Despite living in the D.C. area, to this day I’ve yet to ever see Barack Obama in person. But going back over 30 years, I was able--up close--to photograph Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton.
On more than one occasion, I did not have to submit to a major security screening to have access to where a former U.S. president or presidential candidate was going to be. At other times I photographed, all in Washington, Pope John Paul II, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig, American diplomat and politician W. Averell Harriman, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Bob Hope, Elizabeth Taylor, U.S. House Speaker Tip O’Neill, U.S. Senators Jacob Javits of New York and Howard Baker of Tennessee, and several other members of Congress and public figures.
In November 1979, I learned that Nixon, his wife, and daughters were attending a memorial service at the Fort Myer Chapel, adjacent to Arlington National Cemetery, for former First Lady Mamie Eisenhower a few days after her death. By then Nixon had made other trips to Washington since his resignation as president in 1974.
On my way to work I went to Fort Myer, which then had few limitations on entry to the Army base during most hours of the day. I brought my camera to the area in front of the chapel expecting that I might not be permitted to stay.
I stood with official press photographers waiting for the Nixons to arrive. I said little if anything and tried to conduct myself cautiously. The only request--coming from a Secret Service agent beforehand--was for everyone with a camera to unscrew our lens caps and allow the agent to see our cameras.
Both of the Nixons marched in a military kind of procession to the chapel, rather than simply walking as others attending the memorial did. I was somewhat surprised that one of the Secret Service agents commented that the formality of how Nixon proceeded to the chapel was in keeping with his fondness for pomp and ceremony. Not that that was an unusual observation about Nixon but it was almost refreshing to hear someone with the Secret Service express such a view of him.
The current First Lady at the time, Rosalynn Carter, also attended the service. She arrived shortly before the start and left quickly afterward. A newspaper photograph the next day noted that neither she nor Nixon spoke or acknowledged each other’s presence.
Following the service, I had a chance to get a closer picture of Nixon when he paused outside his limousine to speak with his aide, Jack Brennan (who was played by actor Kevin Bacon in the film Frost/Nixon).
Photos at Joe Louis funeral and of Reagan
A little over year from the Eisenhower memorial, Arlington Cemetery again was the setting for the funeral of world heavyweight boxer Joe Louis. I went and photographed, among others, Washington, D.C. Mayor Marion Barry arriving for the funeral with Jersey Joe Walcott, another ex-champion.
I had no knowledge of Walcott’s career but remembered seeing him in the old boxing film The Harder They Fall (1956), which was Humphrey Bogart’s final movie.
Perhaps the time I was most surprised by lack of security was in February 1981 when I photographed the newly inaugurated President Reagan in front of the Lincoln Memorial when he spoke on Lincoln’s birthday. Someone had to point out to me later in the picture that I may have inadvertently captured the presidential aide carrying the so-called nuclear football.
A man in the background is visible holding a briefcase. Because of his proximity to Reagan, he may have been the assistant who carried the mobile launch codes for authorizing the release of nuclear weapons when the president is away from an established command center.
Six weeks later Reagan was shot outside the Washington Hilton walking to his limo after a speech to a labor group. His assailant, John Hinckley, who also wounded three other people, had wandered into the press area outside the hotel where he fired the shots.
It occurred to me that I would never have been able subsequently to stand as close to Reagan with a camera as I did at the Lincoln Memorial without being fully screened or at all.
Edward Kennedy at Georgetown University
In January 1980 I was able to photograph Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, arriving to speak at Georgetown University. The purpose of his speech was to clarify why he was challenging President Jimmy Carter for the Democratic presidential nomination.
A indication of Kennedy’s faltering and ultimately unsuccessful campaign was heard on campus that day when a man in the crowd shouted, “Say a prayer for Mary Jo,” a reference to Mary Jo Kopechne, the 28-year-old woman who drowned in 1969 after a party on Chappaquiddick Island off Martha’s Vineyard while riding in Kennedy’s automobile under circumstances that remain disputed.
Once in journalism I rarely took more of the same kinds of photos. But it was an element of greater trust and less cause for suspicion at the time that enabled me to take many of the pictures I did.
John Seidenberg - John Seidenberg has worked on newspapers, newsletters, radio news, and produced specialized news publications as well as freelance ...
