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|| SportsShooter.com: News Item: Posted 2007-05-15
Review: 'Moments in Time' by Dirck Halstead
What Photographers Should Be Reading
By Jim McNay, Brooks Institute of Photography
Photo by Dirck Halstead
President Clinton hugs Monica Lewinsky at a fund raising event in Washington DC a few days before the 1996 election. This photograph of the meeting was found months later and became one of the most talked about images in the world.
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Moments in Time: Photos and Stories from One of American's Top Photojournalists by Dirck Halstead, published in 2006 by Abrams, New York.
This volume gives one a sense of the arc of a photojournalism career. From attending the funeral of Robert Capa shortly after graduating from high school, to coverage of Vietnam, the White House, the evolution of digital photography to the founding of the video Platypus Workshop, Halstead has seen it all. Along the way he was a Saigon photo bureau chief for UPI and the senior White House photographer for TIME magazine. These were indeed good times.
Perhaps the strength of the book is Halstead's reminder of some of the key events of recent times. With China in the news every day, it helps to be reminded of just how big a story it was when Nixon made his trip to China in 1972. Halstead fought for and got one of six still photographer's credentials for the trip.
Only a handful of Western journalists had been to China up to that time. The Cold War was in full bloom. The U.S. had just left Vietnam. China had been a major arms supplier to North Vietnam and was a vast unknown in the West.
Halstead takes the reader along on the coverage and the unforgiving brutal schedule of this trip. Deadlines demanded Halstead shoot and process both black and white and color film at his hotel. After a full day of shooting, processing and transmitting finished at 5 am-just in time for an hour's rest before mustering for the next day's 7 am call. Ah, the romantic life of the photojournalist!
As a reminder of the times, the book includes a picture of Halstead on the plane to China sitting with photographer John Dominis, smoking a cigarette in the cabin!
A second revealing chapter covers the fall of Saigon. Halstead fell in love with Vietnam and spent considerable time there. He had the journalist's experience of finding His Place on the Planet while covering this country. He presents a fine description of the slow drip, drip, drip as North Vietnamese forces come ever closer to taking over the city. The signals of trouble closing in-a radio report saying, "The temperature is 105 and rising" and Bing Crosby singing, "White Christmas" as the final signal to evacuate-become real in the chaos Halstead describes.
As he rides a helicopter out just before the fall, the impact of the departure hits home. Halstead writes, "Our helo pulls into a sharp ninety-degree turn and heads across the city toward the coast. I look down and watch as the city that has been so much a part of my life slips over the horizon. The bends of the Mekong lie before me. I realize that I'm feeling as though a vital part of my life is coming to a close... How can it be that in a place of war, I find the happiest times I have ever known? How could I possibly explain to someone who hasn't experienced it how much more alive I feel returning to Saigon at the end of the day, and living and enduring in a place where I'm not even sure I will survive?"
Ironically not long after leaving Vietnam, Halstead found himself doing still photography on the movie set of "Apocalypse Now," a setting as wild and insane as the war it portrayed.
The rest of the story is here too: The White House years of Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton; the famous discovery of the picture of Clinton embracing Monica Lewinsky at a meet-and-greet event; more work on movie sets; Halstead's eventual return to Texas where he lives today.
The book covers an arc of prominent events and shows it was a wonderful ride. And it all serves as a foundation for the on-going educational work Halstead continues today.
Photographers, particularly those in school or seeking to break into the photojournalism, are welcome to send ideas for future columns to Jim McNay at jim.mcnay@brooks.edu.
Questions about getting started in photojournalism that might be answered in future columns are also welcome.
Related Links:
Book: Moments in Time
Jim McNay's Member Page
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