What kind of camera equipment did they give you?
They gave us a 4x5, usually a Speed or Crown Graphic. You would get a 135mm Schneider lens for it. It would stop down to f64 or f32. Some of the really old ones had window shade shutter in the back. You got six holders that you would pre-load. You’d have a red filter, for darkening skies. A focusing cloth to put over your head, and set of sticks, adjustable. You could take it up to twelve feet. Forty years old and my old Hi-Boy sticks (tripod) still work.
You also got a Mamiyaflex, medium format. Three lenses. 120 film was the Tribune’s answer to the trend away from 4x5 cameras. The Mamiyaflex had interchangeable lenses. The 80mm was normal. The 65mm was good for everything. The 105mm was good for portraits and copy shots.
You’d grab a couple of boxes of film and put them in your gadget bag. Maybe 20-40 rolls. Usually near you in your car. You always had 10 rolls with you. But it was rare that you would use the whole roll on an assignment. 12 shots on a roll. If you had 3 rolls, you would get a note from the chief photographer, saying, “What are you doing?” Film wastage was a big bugaboo. Everyone was scared you were going to waste film.
On news assignments like fires, they’d send out a team of photographers. One with a 4x5 and about four holders (holding 8 pieces of film)- generally Tri-X. The other guy would be holding the Mamiyaflex 120. The first pictures would be the 4x5s. In lieu of shipping a digital shot back to the picture editor with a laptop, we rubber-banded our two-shot holder with the caption sheet with a five dollar bill and gave it to the a cabby who gave it to the elevator guy in the Tribune lobby (who got another bump on the fin) and up it went to be souped and printed.
What did a typical photojournalist look like back then?
If you see the movie “Front Page”, the photojournalists were all a bunch of clowns, being led by the nose by the reporter shouting “Now K.C.! Shoot!” That was pre-World War II. It was almost like the photographers were second-class citizens. The story was critical. When I came in it was pretty equal between photographer and reporters. The Sun-Times and the Herald American – Steve Lasker, were pushing the quality of photography. Lasker drove this car…with antennas that looked like arrows sticking out of it. With lights flashing, he looked like a circus. But they would let him bolt through police lines. You’d show up and he was leaving with two holders already shot and captioned.
When you were out an assignment, you had a sport coat, suit and tie. You wore overcoats in the winter. You had the inside pockets, with film holders and flash bulbs so you didn’t have to wear a shoulder bag. Your pockets would bulge. Most of the guys in the summertime had a Mamiyaflex and your battery flash, a mallet head, practically welded to the side of the camera. Your box would hang from a peg. You were all dressed up for anything. It might be as socialite wedding or a fire. I went through half-a-dozen sport coats in a year-and-a-half.
You get to your car, and you have a Motorola radio. It was the size of a couch cushion. It would take up the size of your trunk. So you would kiss your trunk goodbye if you brought your radio. You’d get in, say “I’m rolling” and they would tell you directions. But you carried a map with you all the time. You had to know the city.
As you look back, what did you most enjoy?
The things I loved the most – the atmosphere. Everybody knew everybody. I hadn’t seen anybody talk out of the corner of his mouth before. Some of these old guys, who had been around for years, were so good. You couldn’t believe what they produced. You wouldn’t think it from how they talked. “Hey! Dis is the way we done this. If you wanna get da shot…” They would sling their cameras over on the peg. Everything they did had a casual craft to it. It was beautiful. They had a hard-edged newsman patois. I was a fine art photographer and was hired from a weekly newspaper down in Yuma. It did not set me up for this. I was startled by this. I learned you keep your mouth shut. And laugh at the joke, even if you didn’t get it.
You also looked forward to going to Comiskey Park. You’d go over before the game, and you’d go to the Bard’s Room that was for press and VIP’s. It was all the free food and drinks you wanted. Prime beef. Cigars. Booze. They’d spend time there before walking over with their loaded stomachs and blurry eyed and cover the game. It was the most marvellous men’s club.
Any brushes with organized crime?
My favorite comment from that time came when Val Mazzenga and I were covering the arrest of a local head crusher for the mob and he was being paraded at the old Shakespeare Station, the infamous cop shop that was eventually shut down. We were jammed in the hallway outside the booking room with our Speed Graphic boxes all primed (f/11 and focus set at ten feet). Out of the room hustled this moving island of shoulders, big overcoats and fedora hats. Val hoisted up his Mamiyaflex. Steve Lasker and I had our 4x5s with the slides out and this hulk stops in front of Mazzenga. He reaches up and pops the Press #25 flashbulb from Val's gun and gurgles, "I could have you killed." The freight train of hoods chugged on past. It was a real Jimmy Breslin moment. We didn't have too many of those.
What was the photography department like back then?
The press photographer’s lounge at the Tribune was a great hangout; it looked like something from the dark ages. I brought my Dad back and he thought it was an old movie. A gut-sprung leather spring couch, coffee table and a couple chairs around the room. On one end was a dark hall and printing rooms; on the other end were the rooms for film developing. There was always dampness in air from the developing. Inside guys were running back and forth with white shirts, ties and rubber aprons. Their shirts would have crispy brown pin-holes in them from the acid. You could do your own printing if you wanted, if nothing was going on, but you’d have to get permission. All the inside guys, the pros did the printing.
The ashtray alone in the photo department was the size of a garbage can lid. It was always filled with wet, damp, and dry cigar roaches - juicy cigar roaches from chewing on them. They were dry depending on how long they had sat there. No one ever thought about it. It was so wretched.
What did you most remember about daily life as a press photographer?
How close the photographers were, despite the personalities. If you saw someone who was out of flash bulbs, you’d give them some of yours. If you had a great spot and someone showed up late, you’d let him have a shot. What really mattered back then was getting anything on film at all. Everything was working against you, that in order to get a good shot on film, you really had to work for it. But most of it was action that happened fast. With the twin lens reflex cameras we had, try capturing that action fast, while looking down. You had to compensate for so many variables just to snag an image.
Whatever happened to black fingernails from hydroquinone developer, acetic acid pinholes in your shirtfront and working out reciprocity tables for Kodachrome in your head? Who is left that remembers the recoil of a 4 x 5 inch Graflex firing off -- whipping up its big mirror and the ka-zooop! of the window shade focal plane shutter slapping across the back of the box in front of your film holder?
There was a mystery to photography back then. You were sort of a magician, to be able to get these beautiful shots out of these 4x5 boxes. You’d learn how to make architecture lines straight and turn night into day. The mystery was what elevated your position...It was amazing.
Thanks to Chicago Tribune
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