MORE THAN EYE CANDY AND LUCK:
THE FINE ART OF VISUAL REPORTING DISPLAYED AT SHELDON

Reported by Bill Kelly
STATEWIDE Correspondent


  [Hal Buell]"A really fine picture will have poster qualities to it. They're not cluttered. They're not distracting. They're bang."
[Prof. George Tuck]"In journalism you just got to keep thinking about your next assignment. You're only as good as the last picture you shot."
[Hal Buell]"Photography takes you to places you haven't been before. That is the great value of photography."
The Sheldon Art Gallery, famous for American modern art, has a collection of works that seem to be a remarkable departure, remarkable first because they're art objects mainly donated by the artists. Many were students of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln photojournalism professor, George Tuck.
[Tuck] "There's a long-standing discussion about what is art and what is photography and are the two overlapped?"
The genre is unique. Photographs taken to document, to report. Images never intended for display in an art museum.
[Tuck]" Individuals have to decide whether they consider it art or not.
Tour the exhibit with Professor Tuck and it becomes a sweeping course on the photo as journalism and as art.
[Tuck] "This is a famous photo of Marilyn Monroe that's really a very, very nice one. This was photographed by Maddie Zimmerman for the Associated Press. Marilyn is standing on a subway grate and so air rushes up underneath. It was while they were filming "Seven-Year Itch" in New York City. There are other pictures of Marilyn that have not become famous. This one was famous to a large extent because it was photographed by Associated Press. Virtually every newspaper in the United States took Associated Press wire service and so that picture was one that was made available to them. Simply because of the circulation of the papers and the fact that this is one of the major images that was available makes something like this famous."
What makes a pleasant picture photojournalism?
[Tuck] "Photojournalism would be because it's reproduced in a publication. That would be one of the definitions of it. Photojournalism is shot on deadline. It's designed for use in publications, in print and we're just talking about the print side of it and not the video side of it that can also be photojournalism. The fact that it is designed for reproduction and it's shot on deadline is probably the main distinction that you are going to find about photojournalism as opposed to other kinds of photography."
[ Buell] "Yeah, it's very hard to define photojournalism, I agree with you."
Hal Buell, once the director of photography for the Associated Press, spent decades sorting and selecting some of the best newspaper photos in the world.
[Buell] "Historical pictures, particularly the more famous pictures and the pictures that mark special events, are kind of like -- they're sort of like a milestone of history."
The capture of Nebraska mass murderer, Charles Starkweather. Releasing police dogs on civil rights demonstrators. A Vietnam prisoner of war comes home.
[Buell] "You can measure time in seconds and minutes and hours and days and weeks or you can also measure time by things that happened along the way, and photography, particularly still photography, captures those moments and freezes them and becomes a milestone as a historical record."
[ Tuck] "One of the most famous pictures that we've got anywhere at all in the world is Joe Rosenthal's picture of the flag raising at Iwo Jima. An incredibly powerful picture that was really an icon of its own. Top one you've got Eddie Adams' picture of the execution of the Viet Kong sapper. This gentleman was the chief of police of Saigon, and it's referred to as "The Shot Heard Round the World." It's one picture that tended to sum up the brutality of war in general and helped turn a lot of people against the concept of the Vietnam War."
[Buell] "As far as composition, sure, it was just two simple faces with a gun in the middle. It couldn't be simpler. How simple can it be? The essence of it. And that's why it's such a strong photo. Instant of high drama, life and death, photographed incredibly simply by chance."
[Tuck] "This has always been one of my favorite images. This is by Joel Sartore. Picture of a miner. He is pointing himself out in this group shot in front of a minehead in Kansas. The fact that it's shot at twilight and it's got very, very nice illumination. It tells a very nice story about this person and he survived as a miner. He's lived to a nice old age on that and a lot of them didn't. If you take this picture and compare it right over here with this one, this is also Joel's picture, and it's also out of that same series that he shot on miners. This man is dying of black lung disease so he is one of the people that did not survive or is not going to survive out of this."
[Buell] "I think those of us that are working photography know that pictures can lie as well as words can lie or any other form of visual communication can lie, but the perception is that photography doesn't lie, and by in large photojournalists have an ethic that does not provide pictures that are untrue, and so people look to a photo as documentation of a great event or a challenging event or a controversial event."
One is also staged and the other isn't to a certain degree. How does that fit in with defining again, what's photojournalism?
[Tuck] "Oh, boy, now that's good. The difference between real and staged is a major problem. And one of my contentions is that color photography has forced a lot of photographers into thinking that in order to create a good color picture it has to be controlled so you first start controlling it with light, you start controlling it with gels on your flash, then you pose the person so you change it away from a live event into something that's really very, very controlled."
[Buell] "Photography is very selective. It's selective in the pose that is made. It's selective that when you do photograph something, you automatically -- there is a tendency for the story -- importance to be elevated because there's a photo of it."
President Johnson points to his surgery scar. Rockefeller makes a point for some demonstrators. A demonstration of solidarity by the allies of World War II.
[Buell]"The essence of a good picture is that you see it just like that and that's composition. It has a really fine picture. They all have poster qualities to them. They're not cluttered. They're not distracting. They're bang, they're there and that's it and you see it and the message comes across clear and straight as an arrow."
College track star Wilt Chamberlain on his way up. Pitcher Nolan Ryan at the top of his game. Muhammad Ali on his way down.
[Buell]"When a still picture is made of a great event, particularly a great event, it appears over and over again, not just the time it appears on the event but in a poster, in a book, in other documentary, in a demonstration, in a window, in a magazine, in a retrospective. This picture comes over and over again and it's just stamped repeatedly over and over. It becomes fixed in your mind and is representative of that point in history. That's what an icon is."
[Tuck] "One of the things that a lot of people don't consider when they're talking about photo journalism is there are other things other than hard news. These are a couple of very, very nice images that show a different side of photojournalism. The bottom one is by Ron Lyfeld and this is a very, very nice image of a frosty morning so you see the frost on the fence and it's a very, very nice light moment. It would be a nice feature shot for a newspaper so it's not a major event. It's a very quiet kind of an event that's different."
Babe Ruth says farewell. Mickey Mouse says hello. Mother Teresa says her prayers. It's something that may be unique to photojournalism if these are examples of art. This is a very democratic artform that some kid with a camera in Kansas at the right place at the right time and a good eye can have a photograph that is distributed worldwide, becomes famous just as easily as Pulitzer Prize winners or people with the "New York Times."
[Tuck] "True. And that's it, because with a camera you can go anywhere at any time and you can do almost anything that you want to. The people that do this professionally day in and day out probably have a tendency to come up with better images more often. And as far as luck goes, you create your own luck. If you're not there when the event happens, you're not going to get the picture. If your camera isn't loaded and the event happens in front of you, you're not going to get it. So a lot of it is thinking about what's possible and trying to put yourself in that particular situation."
The mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana.A funeral mass for IRA terrorists in Ireland. A surrender to police in the United States.
[Buell] "It's old hat now in journalistic circles to talk about the photographer as a reporter, but I don't think it's all that old hat in the public and I don't know that the public at large sees photographers as reporters. I really don't know how they see photographers. Probably as crazy paparazzi that will do anything for a picture. I would hope they would come away with an understanding photography can be informative -- I hate to say educational but I guess I can't think of a better word right now, but that's what I hope they would come away with it."
The Sheldon collection is so eclectic that the visitor is sometimes unexpectedly distracted by the next photo, even one across the room before you have even taken in the last image. The nostalgically familiar compete with the new and startling. Even the collector cannot settle on five of his favorites.
[Tuck] "We will hit three or four over here."
I asked you to pick five. You cannot do it.
[Tuck] "I cannot do it, no."
Why is it so hard amongst all these to pick favorites?
[Prof. Tuck] "Because every one is a favorite in a different sense. I mean, it's a favorite because of the student who shot it or the individual who shot it or because of the content of it or because of the visual impact that it's got. I mean there's not just one image that I would say this is it."
And that's because the best photo is the one in tomorrow's newspaper.

Captioning by Nebraska Captioning Center, Lincoln, Nebraska .