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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown
Images of 2004
Aired December 31, 2004 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN HOST: Good evening, again. It is fair to say that millions of words are written in 2004, and we suspect many millions more will be written about the year that is now ending. Tonight, though, words will take a bake seat to pictures. This New Year's Eve we devote the program to the images that helped shape this hour each night we came into your homes. Our regular viewers know why we have such a passion for still photographs and tonight we indulge the passion, no excuses. We get to the pictures in a moment. First, though, a brief look at news of the day.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening. I'm Fredricka Whitfield at the CNN Center in Atlanta. Here's what's happening now. Nearly a week since the tsunamis struck Indian Ocean coastlines aid supplies are arriving in some of the hardest hit regions, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand. The global pledge of aid money topped a billion dollars. U.S. military begin search and rescue missions on the island of Sumatra. The USS Abraham Lincoln carrier group will be close enough to provide aircraft, logistical and medical help.
Investigators in Buenos Aires say at least four emergency exits were padlocked or wired shut in packed nightclub that caught fire last night. Latest death toll, 175 people. Five times the number are injured. According to witnesses the disco was crowded many times beyond its safety capacity. A flare lit by a club-goer set the ceiling on fire. Argentinean police think the doors were locked to keep people from sneaking in.
Victor Yanukovych will continue to challenge the results of Ukraine's presidential election. But he's leaving his post as prime minister announcing on television today. Yanukovych acknowledged he probably wouldn't end up on top in the much disputed presidential election and wanted no part in any government being formed in the meantime.
Skiers lovin' it! Everybody else is dealing with it. Eight feet of snow in northern California's Sierra Nevada, the heaviest snowfall there in a decade. Some roads are closed, some areas are without power, and the snow is still falling. It's coming down in Southern California as well, but as rain. Lots of it. Last night's power outages in Los Angeles are all but fixed, but two inches of rain in San Diego overwhelmed the drainage system and flooded several streets. Another thing, there's a good chance of rain for tomorrow's Rose Bowl parade.
In New Jersey, police are questioning a man who may have pointed a laser device at an aircraft in flight. Police say they're trying to determine if he was involved in more than once incident. Earlier in the week a government official said six commercial airliners had their cockpits illuminated by laser lights in four days while approaching airports.
And you're now looking at a live picture of Times Square in New York City. Stay with CNN for New Year's Eve coverage. Anderson Cooper will be there live in about an hour from now and the ball drops less than two hours from now. This year U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell will send the ball on its way.
NEWSNIGHT WITH AARON BROWN continues right now.
BROWN: We begin tonight at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The Getty began collecting still photography 20 years ago. The works amassed represent the history of photography from its birth until today. This spring the museum celebrated with an exhibition featuring the works of 38 photographers, a list of image-makers, every one of them a genius in the view of the museum's curator.
(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)
WESTON NAEF, J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM: I'd like people sow see a photography as a medium that is capable of inspiring and uplifting us to new levels of understanding, that it is a remarkably coherent stylistic evolution, a kind of unbroken thread where one photographer has stood on the shoulders of another advancing the art by the example and with the assistance of those who came before them.
We began this exhibition at the point where the baby could walk. And that was 1842 when photographers could repeat their successes reliably. The earliest photographic materials were quite insensitive to light. And so whatever subject the photographer chose had to stay reasonably still, but once it became possible to make portraits, portraiture dominated the entire field for the first decade of its life. Many of the photographers had to pay their bills using portraiture as their daily occupation.
LeGray, one day, just said to himself, I have to get back to my roots. He took his camera to the seaside and made extraordinary studies of the water with light and atmosphere dominating. He also made pictures of the harbor with the boat exiting, stopping the motions, and he stopped the motion of a wave crashing on the shore.
Carlton Watkins was train as a carpenter, and he brought to photography an extraordinary degree of instinct. He realized that photographs had to be much larger than they normally were, and in order to make them large, it was necessary to build a camera that he called a mammoth plate camera that accommodated a negative, a sheet of glass 18 x 21 inches in size, and this very large negative was best able to express the grandeur of landscapes such as the ones he found in Yosemite. He has created an extraordinary illusion that his huge camera is poised on the precipice.
Louis Hine occupies an incredibly fragile position between the documentarian and the artist. He used works of art to change social conditions. He was the first photographer that we know of whose actions, his pictures, changed the laws of the United States. In a dozen or more states, his pictures persuaded those who made the laws to create age limits for employment and the number of hour worked, and the conditions under which children could be employed, thus revolutionizing the way our country was structured. Art, the very best art, is something that always moves forward. It never moves backward.
(END VIDEO TAPE)
BROWN: So still ahead tonight a look back at some of photography's legends recently lost.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: When no one else can get there, still photographers always seem to find a way. The risks they take to document their stories are often forgotten, but the impact of those pictures is never lost. That was especially true when we looked at Rick Loomis' work out of Falluja this year. To be sure he did as good a job as any witness in depicting the firefights and the killing and that dying, what this photographs did in a way only still photography can, is quietly and simply perfectly showed the moments in between. In short -- the living.
(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)
RICK LOOMIS, "LOS ANGELES TIMES" PHOTOGRAPHER (voice-over): My name is Rick Loomis and I'm a photographer with the "Los Angeles Times." I am embedded with the 2nd Battalion 1st Marine regiment out of Camp Pendleton in California.
They definitely feel like they are playing defense and they do not like playing defense at all. They're very agitated. They feel like sitting ducks. That's not a position they like to find themselves in. They prefer to go on the offensive. This was a mission that took place on Monday. The marines wanted to go out and take two houses that were just a few hundred yards from the perimeter that they have set up. At one point there was a report of eight insurgents that were near a mosque and a minaret, and the marines sent a team out from one of these houses to go see if they could catch up to these insurgents that were there.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're getting ready to punch out hard.
LOOMIS: They were completely under fire in these two houses, and they said there was a sniper in this minaret, and it ended up sending one or two tank rounds and took down the minaret and then the tanks came in, to get us as well. The plume of smoke is from later on in the day when everybody got out of the house and they basically tried to attack positions where they thought the insurgents had come from.
Following that gun battle, they sent a chaplain over and the chaplain held a couple of services inside this compound where the marines are staying, and during one of the services, a lot of the marines held one candle and placed it into this little mound of dirt, and at the very end of the service, one marine came out alone and did a prayer kneeling down and then put his candle in with the rest of them.
Today was a bright, blue, sunny day. It's just amazing to think what's going on here in the context of seeing a nice day out but also knowing you can't walk out of your little perimeter zone for fear of being attacked or killed.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is your desire here to be baptized here today?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes it is.
LOOMIS: There were four marines baptized today here in service. It was held in a courtyard where they were staying. The baptism was held in the same place that a friendly fire mortar round it come in and killed two marines and then another marine, was killed a couple of days ago, so the memorial for those three there. This gentleman wanted to be baptized there today. They made a baptismal pool out of a piece of plastic sheeting and some MRE boxes. So they basically stacked up the boxes and filled it full of water they could find.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hurry up. Let's go.
LOOMIS: I don't know if you'll ever get marines to admit they were ever fearful for their lives but some of these guys have seen their friends disappear and get wounded, and I think reality is certainly striking them pretty hard.
(END VIDEO TAPE)
BROWN: There are events that shape generations, but rarely does one man shape an entire era. Ronald Reagan did just that. To many he was larger than life. For Diana Walker, he was simply her subject. She spent two decades on the White House beat. Her work is collected in public and in private. 20 years of photographing the presidency.
(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)
DIANA WALKER, "TIME MAGAZINE" PHOTOGRAPHER: People do say that the presidency is probably the loneliest job you could have, and I have to say I never had that impression with President Reagan. He seemed very happy in his job, and in his skin. You saw who he was in public. And he was that way, in my view, in private. He stood tall. He knew how to walk into a room. He knew how to look presidential. He really did.
(voice-over): And he also was quite stylish in the way he dressed and how he looked, and he was wonderful at putting world leaders at ease when he was in private conversation with them.
The Reagan presidency, his two terms, this country was struck by several very large tragedies, and President and Mrs. Reagan were called upon to console many people, whether it was the families of the marines who were killed in the bombing in Lebanon or the Challenger families.
The president himself was quite emotional in a very quiet and dignified way in those moments, and I think he and Mrs. Reagan were extremely helpful to families who were going through a horrible time.
The Reagan administration was very good about setting up photo opportunities. One picture that I remember vividly was the president and Mrs. Reagan standing under the guns on the battleship "USS Iowa," and you see all the sailors lined up, and you see the president and Mrs. Reagan with their hands over their hearts. It's just such a beautiful picture, it almost looks like they're going to break out and dance like you would in a Busby Berkeley musical.
The Statue of Liberty was 100 years old. There the two of them were looking off into the distance at this -- this beautiful symbol of our country, and then the symbol of the presidency next door to them. This was the Reagan presidency.
(END VIDEO TAPE)
BROWN: Later on in our program, a lesson in humility, when photographing the famous. The very famous. And up next, a farewell to two men who helped make photography the art form it is, and made us all see the world just a bit differently.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: "You press the button. We do the rest." George Eastman said that. Said it about the Kodak camera. But he said nothing about when to press the button. A good photographer chooses the right moment. A great one chooses the best. This leaves Henri Cartier- Bresson somewhere between the best and something else entirely. How do you describe a moment frozen in time that also suggests every moment yet to come? You can't. It's like dancing about poetry. The languages don't match. So instead, just look.
(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)
PETER FETTERMAN, PHOTOGRAPHY COLLECTOR: Cartier-Bresson was probably one of most important photographers that ever lived. If you look through the body of his work, the number of truly special inspirational, quote, "genius" images exceeds anybody else in the history of photography.
(voice-over): Henri was always swift on his feet, and the Leica was made for him. That was his instrument of choice. And when he walked around, he looked like an anonymous bank clerk, he always seemed to have a raincoat on and underneath the raincoat he kept this little camera he would whisk out as he saw the decisive moment coming.
HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON, PHOTOGRAPHER: The difference between a good picture and a mediocre picture is a question of millimeters. Small, small difference, but it's essential.
FETTERMAN: It's the ability to pre-visualize an event before it actually happens. Cartier-Bresson had a restless personality, and an intellectual pursuit of events and knowledge and he actually went to places that photograph photographers hadn't been to before and captured the essence of where he was traveling. CARTIER-BRESSON: If I go to a place, it's try and have a picture which concretizes a situation which at one glance has everything and which has the strong relations of shapes which for me is essential. For me, it's a visual pleasure.
FETTERMAN: He does an amazing body of work in Russia in the '50s. Cartier-Bresson was the first photographer from the west who was allowed to actually photograph in the Bolshoi Ballet.
Srinigar (ph) is one of the most powerful, the landscape, the back of the frame the people praying and this wonderful woman's gesture looking up at one of the other praying women.
I would define him as, probably, the greatest creator of images in the history of photography. It's an innate gift that so few people are ever given, and he it for this medium. He is the medium of photography.
(END VIDEO TAPE)
BROWN: Richard Avedon once said that photography was his language. That he spoke through his images more intricately than through his words. His setting was always simple, letting the subjects fill each frame. Mr. Avedon's final photo-essay "Democracy 2004" appeared in the pages of "New Yorker" magazine this fall. Mortality prevented him from completing his look at our country, but the 50 images that do appear strive to show us what the democracy is made of.
(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)
DAVID REMNICK, EDITOR "NEW YORKER": More than half a year ago Richard Avedon set out to do essentially a piece of political photojournalism. The portfolio is called "Democracy" and it's intended, I think, to give a sense of the inclusiveness or potential inclusiveness of the political process. He went to Fort Hood in Texas. He was in California. He was all over the place.
(voice-over): Avedon set up a kind of mini studio at the conventions both in Boston and New York and he had people that would literally pluck delegates off the floor and drag them into this very strange little setup.
I think if you look at that spread you'll see people who represent the enormity of causes that we're confronting or dealing with in American life today, whether it's Greenpeace or people who are involved with the Dean campaign, the Move On organization, or documentary filmmakers like Michael Moore and (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
We include a couple of television personalities because those personalities clearly have an impact on the political process, however absurd it may be that Bill O'Reilly and Jon Stewart have enormous political power, they do.
Avedon had a strong sense of narratives in these portfolios and the choices he makes are intuitive choices that he has that have to did with visual placement as well as story-telling, as well as point of view. You have Sean Penn, who is identified as an anti-war activist and a rather flamboyant one next to what he said is the result of a misbegotten war, someone gravely wounded in that war.
If there is an essential political issue that Avedon wanted to get at in some way, as much as a cameraman can, it was Iraq. So he wanted to go see both cadets who were on their way into the army, soldiers who were on their way to Iraq, or had been back from Iraq.
Avedon's technique of portrait was to allow his subjects to present the face to the world that they wanted to present. He didn't tell them what to do. They did it. And that self-presentation was a big deal and at the center of his work. The portfolio ends with two almost ethereal, even angelic portraits, Jimmy Carter on left side and soon to be Senator Obama. He's on the right.
I think what Avedon was after there, I can only guess, was that somebody could easily say on the left you had a vision of the past and a certain ambition for goodness in politics. And a politician of, for American history, unusual background, of enormous potential and somebody who certainly impressed Avedon. He worked on this for four, five, six months, and it's left incomplete. Avedon had this talent of capturing people like no other.
(END VIDEO TAPE)
BROWN: Coming up, the art of the portrait. Documenting both the human and the man-made. This is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Over the last decade the British photographer Platon has had extraordinary access to the most powerful people in the world, all leaders in the world. His first big assignment, Anthony Hopkins, when his nerves started to get the best of him, Platon, as he tells the story, tried to cancel the shoot. Mr. Hopkins pointed out to him that a little respect and a little humility can make your subject appreciate you all the more. A lesson the photographer says he now carries with him to every assignment.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PLATON, PHOTOGRAPHER (voice-over): "Platon's Republic" has been an amalgamation of all of my favorite portraits and documentary pictures. It's sort of like channel-surfing through contemporary culture. I really wanted to convey what it feels like to go to the White House, to go to the mayor's office, to go to city hall. What it's like to talk to Al Pacino. It's my job to meet fascinating people, interact with them, record my findings on film, and then present it to people to show, this is what I feel it's really like to meet this person.
I am in love with Pammy. There is no doubt about it. On the day of the shoot, I remembered we had racks and racks of couture dresses for her to wear. I left the studio, I ran to the nearest store and bought a $20 American flag. (on camera): They wrapped it in an American flag and rushed it to the studio and I gave it to Pammy and I said, you know, I don't want you to wear any of these dresses. I want you to wear what's in this bag. And she opened it up and within seconds she knew exactly what I wanted. She's an American icon. It doesn't get more American than stars and stripes and Pammy. Ironically, she's Canadian.
I was asked by John Kennedy Jr. to photograph the congressmen who all fought in the Vietnam War and they wanted to do it at the memorial in Washington. What I was struck by was that the surface of the marble was so shiny that when you look at the names of all the poor soldiers that lost their lives in the war, you're actually also looking at the reflection of your face at the same time. I lied down on the floor as they all arrived and asked them to literally stand around my head. So what it creates is this circle. It's almost like the circle of memory or the circle of trust.
I'm fascinated by mannerisms, what makes somebody tick, what guess on inside their mind, how their body language expresses their feelings. Once in a while I'm confronted with someone who has incredible visual flare and Michael Stipe was one of these people. In a way he did all the talking with his mannerisms and with his body and it doesn't really matter whether it's an every day person on the street or the president of the United States.
I have to be honest. I've never met anyone who had the charisma that Clinton has. I really wanted some of the Clinton magic. So I leaned forward and I said, Mr. President, will you show me the love? And I remember he put his hands on his knees, and he smiled the Clinton smile, and I got it on film.
There's no room for two egos in my studio. If I go in humble, then that allows me to fill my space with the person's personality I'm photographing. They walk in. They have a camera pointed at their face, in this hyper real situation, even though it's only 15 minutes, they are very aware that everything they do, every gesture they make can be recorded forever. So they do get nervous and it's my job to break the nerves, to break down the barriers very, very quickly. So that suddenly all these wonderful you know, instinctive gestures and mannerisms come alive.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: The job of the photographer, specifically, the portrait photographer, is to capture the true spirit of his or her subjects. Do they smile or wear a hat? It takes more than this, of course, to make a memorable picture. The great photographers reveal layer after layer in a single flash. That's what two photographers have done in their most unusual book titled "Precious."
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Normally we're commissioned by people to shoot specific things, a specific way at a specific time.
MELANIE DUNEA, PHOTOGRAPHER, PRECIOUS: "Precious" is the actual person playing themselves and hopefully it gets you one step closer.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So we decided to have them participate a little more and ask them what they wanted us to photograph.
DUNEA: In this we wanted to get their essence, get the soul of the subject, the part that they had picked, and make it look precious. And it's people that are imminent in their field. It could be an author or a chef, a movie actress or actor and out intention in "Precious" was actually to emphasize the diversity, to have a very a A level or A list celebrity and then to have a chef and the best cardiologist. Tony Hawk gave a really interesting quote and he said, I choose my scars because they're my stories and I think of the same thing with Twila Tharp.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's true, big toes, sort of stick out like that. It's unbelievable and that apparently is what happens to virtually everybody's feet when they wear those ballet points.
DUNEA: Daniel, when we arrived at the restaurant, he said, my tongue, it's just definitely my tongue. That's the essence of cooking is my tongue.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This book isn't a vehicle to show photographs. It is an entity in itself. It is "Precious."
DUNEA: We really wanted it to be a gem, precious. That's why we used the gold, which is why we used the graphics.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It would be very, very difficult to have these photographs without the swath of gold across them and without the sort of juxtaposition with the other photographs as well. And (UNINTELLIGIBLE) he told us before that he wanted to photograph his hands. He has such a recognizable shaped head.
DUNEA: And it was important to somehow keep the person, the subject. We wanted to see who it was. We didn't want to have a book full of hands and eyes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We tried to show part of, sort of their feelings that they have toward the part of their body that they chose. Paul (UNINTELLIGIBLE), his quote was how he was horrified one morning because he thought he'd worked in a blind. So even though he chose his eyes, I had him in a sort of a beautiful landscape with his hands over his eyes.
DUNEA: Susan Sarandon, she chose her spirit.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ... which was a very difficult thing to do. It took us so long to work out the exact exposure, the exact amount of light and for how quickly she should move from one place to the next. Paloma Picasso...
DUNEA: What an elegant woman.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yep. She chose her shoulders. I think actually that was a bit of cheating because that was her husband's favorite part.
DUNEA: It was just the essence of her. It's sort of an abstract photograph harkening back to perhaps her dad. That's actually one of my favorite pictures, the David Copperfield picture. I think it sums up "Precious" in a nutshell. It's the elements, the graphics and just a little hint of David Copperfield.
We really do try to show the truth of the person, the essence, the soul of the person when we photograph them. So "Precious" is the actual person playing themselves and hopefully this gets you one step closer. It tears away one more layer.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: A quick note of congratulations in order here. The photographers we just met were no doubt having their own pictures taken today as they exchanged marriage vows.
After the break, Title IX in four-four time. A collection of images to make your toes tap around the world. This is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: This is about images delayed. When Title IX was passed in 1972, only about one in 27 school-aged girls played sports. Today one in three does. But even as girls and women have hit the courts and the fields and the diamonds, images of them in action have been relatively rare. It's something sports journalist Jane Gottesman noticed and set out to change. The results have been shown at the Smithsonian and are contained in the pages of the book called "Game Face."
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JANE GOTTESMAN, DIR. & CO-CURATOR, GAME FACE: "Game Face" is about women discovering their strength perhaps in sports and then exerting it or flexing their muscles outside of sports. I was a reporter out in San Francisco at the "San Francisco Chronicle" and I noticed after a year or so in the sports department that women were sorely underrepresented in the sports pages. And I thought that girls and women were hungry for a reflection of their own athleticism that was accurate and true.
GEOFFREY BIDDLE, CO-CURATOR, GAME FACE: We looked at over 200,000 images in the course of putting this project together. We wanted to include a broad range of not only sports, but types of physical expression. So we have the football player and we have the girl tossing a ball at the side of her house. We wanted to show all different age ranges, all different races, all different levels of ability.
GOTTESMAN: The getting ready session to me is one of the ones I can really relate to the most. I remember that feeling of butterflies in my stomach, you know, before a competition, and whether you're a 12 and under swimmer or whether you're an Olympic champion, you have to sort of get yourself psyched up and get yourself prepared to accept a challenge and put yourself out there without your coach, without your mother and you have to be able to step up to the line.
Start as a moment in time is meant to describe that instantaneous moment when all of this preparation and all of this talent and all this training begins to happen. You know, just explodes. So you see runners who are just about to take off from the starting block. You see a pitcher, who's just about to release the ball.
Action is the longest section of the Game Face project. We wanted to show all these different ways that women are active, involved, totally unself-conscious in their moment of being an athlete. We have a picture of the highest level of field hockey being played by one of the strongest players in American history and then we have a photograph of girls double Dutch jump roping up in Spanish Harlem.
Women and girls aren't necessarily given a football on their 4th birthday, that they may be given a hula hoop or they may be given a pair of roller skates or they may be given a baton to twirl and so those are the implements that they use and maybe spent hours and hours learning how to master.
People coming to the moment of conclusion after all of the exertion that they've put themselves through to do their best. We wanted to show that culmination, that moment of truth really where they reach the finish line in one way or another symbolically or actually.
In sports as in the rest of your life you finish a task, you finish a challenge and you know, almost instability, you're getting ready for the next one. Maybe you have a few minutes or a few days to enjoy the victory, enjoy the accomplishment or mull over the mistake that you made.
The photograph in the exhibition of a woman 100 years ago standing beside her bicycle looking out into the horizon. She's got one of greatest game faces on in the entire exhibition. I think women have always shown determination, grit. I think women have had to put their game face on to take sports to the level that it now.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Music now, music for the ears and the eyes. New Orleans jazz and heritage festival celebrated its 35th year this year and from its beginning, photographer Michael P. Smith, has been documenting the artists who make the music. As we see it, making pictures of music might be one of the toughest assignments around and Mr. Smith has succeeded splendidly. His images are silent but they are not quiet.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
QUINT DAVIS, NEW ORLEANS JAZZ & HERITAGE FESTIVAL: 2004 is the 35th anniversary of the New Orleans jazz and heritage festival. It started in 1970 in a little square downtown called Congo Square, which is the birthplace of African music in North America. Mike Smith has been a part of jazz fest the entire 35 years. Mike Smith is really the chronicler of this culture. HERMAN LEONARD, PHOTOGRAPHER & FRIEND: He's sort of a laid back, quiet fellow. Doesn't go out and push his work. Jazz is the only true really uniquely American art form and here we have Michael who has done this wonderful documentation of all of these people.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We came up with the idea this year to have our 35th anniversary through the eyes of Mike Smith, outside at the festival, all around the grounds, we have these kiosks and they're called Mike Smith memories. The people who are at the festival are just like us and just like Mike Smith. Many of them have been here 10 and 20 years.
LESLIE SMITH, MICHAEL P. SMITH'S DAUGHTER: My father has Parkinson's and he's moving a little slower than he used to. So I've been carrying his stuff, just kind of being there if he needs something, and going around -- taking photos like he always has.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There are generations that have grown up with Mike Smith taking their picture. Older generations that have passed on and then new generations come along. So we can trace the growth, the young Neville brothers, the older Neville Brothers, Bonnie Raitt in the '70s. B.B. King in the '70s. B. B. King played on the festival in 1972, to make that leap, our little hometown festival had the king of the blues, it was a great occasion, and Mike Smith took this classic, classic picture of him. Well, the next year in 1973, B.B. came back. We got this picture, had it framed, gave it to him on the stage, and that was me giving him the picture.
Just as live music itself is a participatory art form, it's one of the only art forms where the audience and the artist experience the art together. Well, Mike smith is like that. He's like music because at our festival, when people look at his pictures, they're experiencing something that they experienced before.
JON CLEARY, MUSICIAN: The pictures he has of musicians are musicians at work. You can see them busting the sweat, really digging in, kind of the essence of what New Orleans music is all about.
SMITH: My father captures energy. The thing that interests him when he's photographing is energy, passion. When he feels that moment, when it's just raw, aliveness, that's what he shoots. He feels that what he's capturing is what's special. Maybe in his secret heart he understands how amazingly important all of this is, but I think ultimately for him, he just wanted to make sure that someone knew that there was a record of this amazing, wonderful culture we have here. You know, and that someone would know.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Coming up next, what happens when man and nature intercept, a most unusual way of seeing a most unusual river.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Ansel Adams, who made a name for himself photographing scenes in nature, put it awfully well. Almost anything man-made that enduring in time acquires some qualities of the natural. Bleak shapes, he wrote, grow into a kind of magic that once seen cannot easily be ignored. Which brings us to the Los Angeles River, which, if we were being honest, is really a drainage ditch, yet which through the eyes of photographer John Humble cannot be ignored.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN HUMBLE, PHOTOGRAPHER: I began photographing the river, because I had been photographing L.A. for a long time. And I kind of ignored river, like everybody else. It's not really a river any more. As you can see, it's a big concrete ditch now. I just decided to do it in an almost pictorial way, to take something as ugly as this and really create beautiful, beautiful photographs from it. So a lot of it had to do with lighting. It had to do with my selection of the time, the angle, all that sort of thing.
Up through the Glendale narrows, they could not put concrete on the bottom because the water level is too close to the surface. And so there are areas through there where there's a lot of vegetation that grows along the river so it looks more like a real river, because it looks like fall in Vermont. I created that much through lighting, because the fact is that the sun is going down and it creates all of those reds and oranges and yellows across the foliage, so it looks like fall. In fact it's all green because of the light on it. And then I shot under the bridge and the river is traveling under the bridge and you see all the pillars there. Again, that's only a photograph because of the lighting. Because of the fact that it was very late afternoon and the light, kind of golden light was coming under and illuminating that area under the bridge.
I think a lot people look at the power wires in Los Angeles and think they're relatively ugly. In a way I guess they are, although, of course they remind me of Paris and the Eiffel Tower. But they also are a stark reminder of how we live in southern California, that everything is visible and they help me in a way compositionally, when I'm making photographs, because I can use them to slice up areas that would normally not have anything happening in them.
That's the head waters of the Los Angeles River, and right there what you see is, you see Royal Talabasis (ph) and Bell Creek and when they come together right behind Kanoga (ph) Park High School, that's the beginning of the Los Angeles river. All of the water from all around here, from the mountains, from the streets, everywhere, flows into this river and 51 miles of concrete later, it gets taken out to the ocean in Long Beach.
I think that it's too bad more people in Los Angeles aren't aware of the really rich history that this river has. The reason that Los Angeles is here today as a city is because of this river and by the time I finished photographing the river I actually felt some affection for this river.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: After a year filled with reminders of the hatreds that divide us, we now turn to the ties that bind. They're captured in a book from the lowly planet travel guide people. The book is called "One Planet: See It for Yourself." So -- see it for yourself.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANN HOPKING, PUBLISHER, ONE PLANET: Our philosophy has always been to encourage people to just get out there and just do it. It is about taking that challenge, taking that leap. We wanted to show images from all over the world. We wanted to show people doing all manner of different things. It was one of those situations where the concept developed sort of organically and it became a book about the connections between people, between landscapes, between buildings, between emotions.
There's a crowd shot in Italy and a crowd shot in India. What I love about the one in Italy is, if you look at the image carefully, you'll see that everybody's talking to the person next to them there at a horse race or some kind of carnival, out for the day, totally immersed in one another.
In the other image in India, it's a kind of spiritual gathering and it's actually a moment of prayer. You can tell that the people are connecting with each other in exactly the same way. We have three monks walking through a lily pond walking sometime in the late evening. It's a very calm kind of image. There are just three men walking together in friendship and solidarity. Then on the other page, we have three men jumping in a rubbish dump somewhere in the Philippines and they're doing exactly the same thing. There are three young men enjoying themselves, enjoying each other and the background of the image is actually quite similar.
This was a pairing that was between an ancient medieval temple in Rajastan (ph) in India and a much more contemporary temple in Kyoto, in Japan. There's a colonnade, pillars running through both images. The red on the left, the white on the right and the person walking through it exactly at the same spot. So, again it gives you a sense of the universality of what we do, wherever we are, may be experiencing exactly the same things.
Sometimes it was simply the way that the images looked the same. So we had in one pairing some drums lined up against the wall. And then on the other side we had some pots of dried paint and they took the same shapes. So often the connections were about the similarity in the way things looked, and then on other occasions it was about the similarity in landscapes.
We talk about the canyons of Manhattan or Michigan Avenue and can you see that, in fact, the way that light carves out shapes is just the same in the Grand Canyon as it is on a skyscraper. So it was really something to say, you know, when you actually look at things, look at them as though it were with a fresh eye every time. You imagine that in some way they're probably experiencing quite a similar thing, a similar emotion about the challenge of conquering something on your own and about being out there in this sort of vast and amazing space of nature, and being, really, on your own, challenging nature in that way.
What I really want is for people to read this book, to take some inspiration from it and to get out there and do things that they wouldn't perhaps have thought they could do, or would be too scared to do, and really just take the risk. Take the challenge, and see the world for yourself.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Truth be told, there is little on the program we are more proud of than the fact that we took still photos and brought them to television in ways that no one else has. It took a little bit of risk to try it and an awful lot of talent by our producers to pull it off, and when you string it all together as we did tonight, we are especially proud. We can hardly wait for next year's batch. Have a great New Year's and a good night, from all of us at NEWSNIGHT.
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Aired December 31, 2004 - 22:00 ET
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AARON BROWN, CNN HOST: Good evening, again. It is fair to say that millions of words are written in 2004, and we suspect many millions more will be written about the year that is now ending. Tonight, though, words will take a bake seat to pictures. This New Year's Eve we devote the program to the images that helped shape this hour each night we came into your homes. Our regular viewers know why we have such a passion for still photographs and tonight we indulge the passion, no excuses. We get to the pictures in a moment. First, though, a brief look at news of the day.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening. I'm Fredricka Whitfield at the CNN Center in Atlanta. Here's what's happening now. Nearly a week since the tsunamis struck Indian Ocean coastlines aid supplies are arriving in some of the hardest hit regions, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand. The global pledge of aid money topped a billion dollars. U.S. military begin search and rescue missions on the island of Sumatra. The USS Abraham Lincoln carrier group will be close enough to provide aircraft, logistical and medical help.
Investigators in Buenos Aires say at least four emergency exits were padlocked or wired shut in packed nightclub that caught fire last night. Latest death toll, 175 people. Five times the number are injured. According to witnesses the disco was crowded many times beyond its safety capacity. A flare lit by a club-goer set the ceiling on fire. Argentinean police think the doors were locked to keep people from sneaking in.
Victor Yanukovych will continue to challenge the results of Ukraine's presidential election. But he's leaving his post as prime minister announcing on television today. Yanukovych acknowledged he probably wouldn't end up on top in the much disputed presidential election and wanted no part in any government being formed in the meantime.
Skiers lovin' it! Everybody else is dealing with it. Eight feet of snow in northern California's Sierra Nevada, the heaviest snowfall there in a decade. Some roads are closed, some areas are without power, and the snow is still falling. It's coming down in Southern California as well, but as rain. Lots of it. Last night's power outages in Los Angeles are all but fixed, but two inches of rain in San Diego overwhelmed the drainage system and flooded several streets. Another thing, there's a good chance of rain for tomorrow's Rose Bowl parade.
In New Jersey, police are questioning a man who may have pointed a laser device at an aircraft in flight. Police say they're trying to determine if he was involved in more than once incident. Earlier in the week a government official said six commercial airliners had their cockpits illuminated by laser lights in four days while approaching airports.
And you're now looking at a live picture of Times Square in New York City. Stay with CNN for New Year's Eve coverage. Anderson Cooper will be there live in about an hour from now and the ball drops less than two hours from now. This year U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell will send the ball on its way.
NEWSNIGHT WITH AARON BROWN continues right now.
BROWN: We begin tonight at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The Getty began collecting still photography 20 years ago. The works amassed represent the history of photography from its birth until today. This spring the museum celebrated with an exhibition featuring the works of 38 photographers, a list of image-makers, every one of them a genius in the view of the museum's curator.
(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)
WESTON NAEF, J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM: I'd like people sow see a photography as a medium that is capable of inspiring and uplifting us to new levels of understanding, that it is a remarkably coherent stylistic evolution, a kind of unbroken thread where one photographer has stood on the shoulders of another advancing the art by the example and with the assistance of those who came before them.
We began this exhibition at the point where the baby could walk. And that was 1842 when photographers could repeat their successes reliably. The earliest photographic materials were quite insensitive to light. And so whatever subject the photographer chose had to stay reasonably still, but once it became possible to make portraits, portraiture dominated the entire field for the first decade of its life. Many of the photographers had to pay their bills using portraiture as their daily occupation.
LeGray, one day, just said to himself, I have to get back to my roots. He took his camera to the seaside and made extraordinary studies of the water with light and atmosphere dominating. He also made pictures of the harbor with the boat exiting, stopping the motions, and he stopped the motion of a wave crashing on the shore.
Carlton Watkins was train as a carpenter, and he brought to photography an extraordinary degree of instinct. He realized that photographs had to be much larger than they normally were, and in order to make them large, it was necessary to build a camera that he called a mammoth plate camera that accommodated a negative, a sheet of glass 18 x 21 inches in size, and this very large negative was best able to express the grandeur of landscapes such as the ones he found in Yosemite. He has created an extraordinary illusion that his huge camera is poised on the precipice.
Louis Hine occupies an incredibly fragile position between the documentarian and the artist. He used works of art to change social conditions. He was the first photographer that we know of whose actions, his pictures, changed the laws of the United States. In a dozen or more states, his pictures persuaded those who made the laws to create age limits for employment and the number of hour worked, and the conditions under which children could be employed, thus revolutionizing the way our country was structured. Art, the very best art, is something that always moves forward. It never moves backward.
(END VIDEO TAPE)
BROWN: So still ahead tonight a look back at some of photography's legends recently lost.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: When no one else can get there, still photographers always seem to find a way. The risks they take to document their stories are often forgotten, but the impact of those pictures is never lost. That was especially true when we looked at Rick Loomis' work out of Falluja this year. To be sure he did as good a job as any witness in depicting the firefights and the killing and that dying, what this photographs did in a way only still photography can, is quietly and simply perfectly showed the moments in between. In short -- the living.
(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)
RICK LOOMIS, "LOS ANGELES TIMES" PHOTOGRAPHER (voice-over): My name is Rick Loomis and I'm a photographer with the "Los Angeles Times." I am embedded with the 2nd Battalion 1st Marine regiment out of Camp Pendleton in California.
They definitely feel like they are playing defense and they do not like playing defense at all. They're very agitated. They feel like sitting ducks. That's not a position they like to find themselves in. They prefer to go on the offensive. This was a mission that took place on Monday. The marines wanted to go out and take two houses that were just a few hundred yards from the perimeter that they have set up. At one point there was a report of eight insurgents that were near a mosque and a minaret, and the marines sent a team out from one of these houses to go see if they could catch up to these insurgents that were there.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're getting ready to punch out hard.
LOOMIS: They were completely under fire in these two houses, and they said there was a sniper in this minaret, and it ended up sending one or two tank rounds and took down the minaret and then the tanks came in, to get us as well. The plume of smoke is from later on in the day when everybody got out of the house and they basically tried to attack positions where they thought the insurgents had come from.
Following that gun battle, they sent a chaplain over and the chaplain held a couple of services inside this compound where the marines are staying, and during one of the services, a lot of the marines held one candle and placed it into this little mound of dirt, and at the very end of the service, one marine came out alone and did a prayer kneeling down and then put his candle in with the rest of them.
Today was a bright, blue, sunny day. It's just amazing to think what's going on here in the context of seeing a nice day out but also knowing you can't walk out of your little perimeter zone for fear of being attacked or killed.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is your desire here to be baptized here today?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes it is.
LOOMIS: There were four marines baptized today here in service. It was held in a courtyard where they were staying. The baptism was held in the same place that a friendly fire mortar round it come in and killed two marines and then another marine, was killed a couple of days ago, so the memorial for those three there. This gentleman wanted to be baptized there today. They made a baptismal pool out of a piece of plastic sheeting and some MRE boxes. So they basically stacked up the boxes and filled it full of water they could find.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hurry up. Let's go.
LOOMIS: I don't know if you'll ever get marines to admit they were ever fearful for their lives but some of these guys have seen their friends disappear and get wounded, and I think reality is certainly striking them pretty hard.
(END VIDEO TAPE)
BROWN: There are events that shape generations, but rarely does one man shape an entire era. Ronald Reagan did just that. To many he was larger than life. For Diana Walker, he was simply her subject. She spent two decades on the White House beat. Her work is collected in public and in private. 20 years of photographing the presidency.
(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)
DIANA WALKER, "TIME MAGAZINE" PHOTOGRAPHER: People do say that the presidency is probably the loneliest job you could have, and I have to say I never had that impression with President Reagan. He seemed very happy in his job, and in his skin. You saw who he was in public. And he was that way, in my view, in private. He stood tall. He knew how to walk into a room. He knew how to look presidential. He really did.
(voice-over): And he also was quite stylish in the way he dressed and how he looked, and he was wonderful at putting world leaders at ease when he was in private conversation with them.
The Reagan presidency, his two terms, this country was struck by several very large tragedies, and President and Mrs. Reagan were called upon to console many people, whether it was the families of the marines who were killed in the bombing in Lebanon or the Challenger families.
The president himself was quite emotional in a very quiet and dignified way in those moments, and I think he and Mrs. Reagan were extremely helpful to families who were going through a horrible time.
The Reagan administration was very good about setting up photo opportunities. One picture that I remember vividly was the president and Mrs. Reagan standing under the guns on the battleship "USS Iowa," and you see all the sailors lined up, and you see the president and Mrs. Reagan with their hands over their hearts. It's just such a beautiful picture, it almost looks like they're going to break out and dance like you would in a Busby Berkeley musical.
The Statue of Liberty was 100 years old. There the two of them were looking off into the distance at this -- this beautiful symbol of our country, and then the symbol of the presidency next door to them. This was the Reagan presidency.
(END VIDEO TAPE)
BROWN: Later on in our program, a lesson in humility, when photographing the famous. The very famous. And up next, a farewell to two men who helped make photography the art form it is, and made us all see the world just a bit differently.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: "You press the button. We do the rest." George Eastman said that. Said it about the Kodak camera. But he said nothing about when to press the button. A good photographer chooses the right moment. A great one chooses the best. This leaves Henri Cartier- Bresson somewhere between the best and something else entirely. How do you describe a moment frozen in time that also suggests every moment yet to come? You can't. It's like dancing about poetry. The languages don't match. So instead, just look.
(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)
PETER FETTERMAN, PHOTOGRAPHY COLLECTOR: Cartier-Bresson was probably one of most important photographers that ever lived. If you look through the body of his work, the number of truly special inspirational, quote, "genius" images exceeds anybody else in the history of photography.
(voice-over): Henri was always swift on his feet, and the Leica was made for him. That was his instrument of choice. And when he walked around, he looked like an anonymous bank clerk, he always seemed to have a raincoat on and underneath the raincoat he kept this little camera he would whisk out as he saw the decisive moment coming.
HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON, PHOTOGRAPHER: The difference between a good picture and a mediocre picture is a question of millimeters. Small, small difference, but it's essential.
FETTERMAN: It's the ability to pre-visualize an event before it actually happens. Cartier-Bresson had a restless personality, and an intellectual pursuit of events and knowledge and he actually went to places that photograph photographers hadn't been to before and captured the essence of where he was traveling. CARTIER-BRESSON: If I go to a place, it's try and have a picture which concretizes a situation which at one glance has everything and which has the strong relations of shapes which for me is essential. For me, it's a visual pleasure.
FETTERMAN: He does an amazing body of work in Russia in the '50s. Cartier-Bresson was the first photographer from the west who was allowed to actually photograph in the Bolshoi Ballet.
Srinigar (ph) is one of the most powerful, the landscape, the back of the frame the people praying and this wonderful woman's gesture looking up at one of the other praying women.
I would define him as, probably, the greatest creator of images in the history of photography. It's an innate gift that so few people are ever given, and he it for this medium. He is the medium of photography.
(END VIDEO TAPE)
BROWN: Richard Avedon once said that photography was his language. That he spoke through his images more intricately than through his words. His setting was always simple, letting the subjects fill each frame. Mr. Avedon's final photo-essay "Democracy 2004" appeared in the pages of "New Yorker" magazine this fall. Mortality prevented him from completing his look at our country, but the 50 images that do appear strive to show us what the democracy is made of.
(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)
DAVID REMNICK, EDITOR "NEW YORKER": More than half a year ago Richard Avedon set out to do essentially a piece of political photojournalism. The portfolio is called "Democracy" and it's intended, I think, to give a sense of the inclusiveness or potential inclusiveness of the political process. He went to Fort Hood in Texas. He was in California. He was all over the place.
(voice-over): Avedon set up a kind of mini studio at the conventions both in Boston and New York and he had people that would literally pluck delegates off the floor and drag them into this very strange little setup.
I think if you look at that spread you'll see people who represent the enormity of causes that we're confronting or dealing with in American life today, whether it's Greenpeace or people who are involved with the Dean campaign, the Move On organization, or documentary filmmakers like Michael Moore and (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
We include a couple of television personalities because those personalities clearly have an impact on the political process, however absurd it may be that Bill O'Reilly and Jon Stewart have enormous political power, they do.
Avedon had a strong sense of narratives in these portfolios and the choices he makes are intuitive choices that he has that have to did with visual placement as well as story-telling, as well as point of view. You have Sean Penn, who is identified as an anti-war activist and a rather flamboyant one next to what he said is the result of a misbegotten war, someone gravely wounded in that war.
If there is an essential political issue that Avedon wanted to get at in some way, as much as a cameraman can, it was Iraq. So he wanted to go see both cadets who were on their way into the army, soldiers who were on their way to Iraq, or had been back from Iraq.
Avedon's technique of portrait was to allow his subjects to present the face to the world that they wanted to present. He didn't tell them what to do. They did it. And that self-presentation was a big deal and at the center of his work. The portfolio ends with two almost ethereal, even angelic portraits, Jimmy Carter on left side and soon to be Senator Obama. He's on the right.
I think what Avedon was after there, I can only guess, was that somebody could easily say on the left you had a vision of the past and a certain ambition for goodness in politics. And a politician of, for American history, unusual background, of enormous potential and somebody who certainly impressed Avedon. He worked on this for four, five, six months, and it's left incomplete. Avedon had this talent of capturing people like no other.
(END VIDEO TAPE)
BROWN: Coming up, the art of the portrait. Documenting both the human and the man-made. This is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Over the last decade the British photographer Platon has had extraordinary access to the most powerful people in the world, all leaders in the world. His first big assignment, Anthony Hopkins, when his nerves started to get the best of him, Platon, as he tells the story, tried to cancel the shoot. Mr. Hopkins pointed out to him that a little respect and a little humility can make your subject appreciate you all the more. A lesson the photographer says he now carries with him to every assignment.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PLATON, PHOTOGRAPHER (voice-over): "Platon's Republic" has been an amalgamation of all of my favorite portraits and documentary pictures. It's sort of like channel-surfing through contemporary culture. I really wanted to convey what it feels like to go to the White House, to go to the mayor's office, to go to city hall. What it's like to talk to Al Pacino. It's my job to meet fascinating people, interact with them, record my findings on film, and then present it to people to show, this is what I feel it's really like to meet this person.
I am in love with Pammy. There is no doubt about it. On the day of the shoot, I remembered we had racks and racks of couture dresses for her to wear. I left the studio, I ran to the nearest store and bought a $20 American flag. (on camera): They wrapped it in an American flag and rushed it to the studio and I gave it to Pammy and I said, you know, I don't want you to wear any of these dresses. I want you to wear what's in this bag. And she opened it up and within seconds she knew exactly what I wanted. She's an American icon. It doesn't get more American than stars and stripes and Pammy. Ironically, she's Canadian.
I was asked by John Kennedy Jr. to photograph the congressmen who all fought in the Vietnam War and they wanted to do it at the memorial in Washington. What I was struck by was that the surface of the marble was so shiny that when you look at the names of all the poor soldiers that lost their lives in the war, you're actually also looking at the reflection of your face at the same time. I lied down on the floor as they all arrived and asked them to literally stand around my head. So what it creates is this circle. It's almost like the circle of memory or the circle of trust.
I'm fascinated by mannerisms, what makes somebody tick, what guess on inside their mind, how their body language expresses their feelings. Once in a while I'm confronted with someone who has incredible visual flare and Michael Stipe was one of these people. In a way he did all the talking with his mannerisms and with his body and it doesn't really matter whether it's an every day person on the street or the president of the United States.
I have to be honest. I've never met anyone who had the charisma that Clinton has. I really wanted some of the Clinton magic. So I leaned forward and I said, Mr. President, will you show me the love? And I remember he put his hands on his knees, and he smiled the Clinton smile, and I got it on film.
There's no room for two egos in my studio. If I go in humble, then that allows me to fill my space with the person's personality I'm photographing. They walk in. They have a camera pointed at their face, in this hyper real situation, even though it's only 15 minutes, they are very aware that everything they do, every gesture they make can be recorded forever. So they do get nervous and it's my job to break the nerves, to break down the barriers very, very quickly. So that suddenly all these wonderful you know, instinctive gestures and mannerisms come alive.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: The job of the photographer, specifically, the portrait photographer, is to capture the true spirit of his or her subjects. Do they smile or wear a hat? It takes more than this, of course, to make a memorable picture. The great photographers reveal layer after layer in a single flash. That's what two photographers have done in their most unusual book titled "Precious."
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Normally we're commissioned by people to shoot specific things, a specific way at a specific time.
MELANIE DUNEA, PHOTOGRAPHER, PRECIOUS: "Precious" is the actual person playing themselves and hopefully it gets you one step closer.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So we decided to have them participate a little more and ask them what they wanted us to photograph.
DUNEA: In this we wanted to get their essence, get the soul of the subject, the part that they had picked, and make it look precious. And it's people that are imminent in their field. It could be an author or a chef, a movie actress or actor and out intention in "Precious" was actually to emphasize the diversity, to have a very a A level or A list celebrity and then to have a chef and the best cardiologist. Tony Hawk gave a really interesting quote and he said, I choose my scars because they're my stories and I think of the same thing with Twila Tharp.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's true, big toes, sort of stick out like that. It's unbelievable and that apparently is what happens to virtually everybody's feet when they wear those ballet points.
DUNEA: Daniel, when we arrived at the restaurant, he said, my tongue, it's just definitely my tongue. That's the essence of cooking is my tongue.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This book isn't a vehicle to show photographs. It is an entity in itself. It is "Precious."
DUNEA: We really wanted it to be a gem, precious. That's why we used the gold, which is why we used the graphics.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It would be very, very difficult to have these photographs without the swath of gold across them and without the sort of juxtaposition with the other photographs as well. And (UNINTELLIGIBLE) he told us before that he wanted to photograph his hands. He has such a recognizable shaped head.
DUNEA: And it was important to somehow keep the person, the subject. We wanted to see who it was. We didn't want to have a book full of hands and eyes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We tried to show part of, sort of their feelings that they have toward the part of their body that they chose. Paul (UNINTELLIGIBLE), his quote was how he was horrified one morning because he thought he'd worked in a blind. So even though he chose his eyes, I had him in a sort of a beautiful landscape with his hands over his eyes.
DUNEA: Susan Sarandon, she chose her spirit.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ... which was a very difficult thing to do. It took us so long to work out the exact exposure, the exact amount of light and for how quickly she should move from one place to the next. Paloma Picasso...
DUNEA: What an elegant woman.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yep. She chose her shoulders. I think actually that was a bit of cheating because that was her husband's favorite part.
DUNEA: It was just the essence of her. It's sort of an abstract photograph harkening back to perhaps her dad. That's actually one of my favorite pictures, the David Copperfield picture. I think it sums up "Precious" in a nutshell. It's the elements, the graphics and just a little hint of David Copperfield.
We really do try to show the truth of the person, the essence, the soul of the person when we photograph them. So "Precious" is the actual person playing themselves and hopefully this gets you one step closer. It tears away one more layer.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: A quick note of congratulations in order here. The photographers we just met were no doubt having their own pictures taken today as they exchanged marriage vows.
After the break, Title IX in four-four time. A collection of images to make your toes tap around the world. This is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: This is about images delayed. When Title IX was passed in 1972, only about one in 27 school-aged girls played sports. Today one in three does. But even as girls and women have hit the courts and the fields and the diamonds, images of them in action have been relatively rare. It's something sports journalist Jane Gottesman noticed and set out to change. The results have been shown at the Smithsonian and are contained in the pages of the book called "Game Face."
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JANE GOTTESMAN, DIR. & CO-CURATOR, GAME FACE: "Game Face" is about women discovering their strength perhaps in sports and then exerting it or flexing their muscles outside of sports. I was a reporter out in San Francisco at the "San Francisco Chronicle" and I noticed after a year or so in the sports department that women were sorely underrepresented in the sports pages. And I thought that girls and women were hungry for a reflection of their own athleticism that was accurate and true.
GEOFFREY BIDDLE, CO-CURATOR, GAME FACE: We looked at over 200,000 images in the course of putting this project together. We wanted to include a broad range of not only sports, but types of physical expression. So we have the football player and we have the girl tossing a ball at the side of her house. We wanted to show all different age ranges, all different races, all different levels of ability.
GOTTESMAN: The getting ready session to me is one of the ones I can really relate to the most. I remember that feeling of butterflies in my stomach, you know, before a competition, and whether you're a 12 and under swimmer or whether you're an Olympic champion, you have to sort of get yourself psyched up and get yourself prepared to accept a challenge and put yourself out there without your coach, without your mother and you have to be able to step up to the line.
Start as a moment in time is meant to describe that instantaneous moment when all of this preparation and all of this talent and all this training begins to happen. You know, just explodes. So you see runners who are just about to take off from the starting block. You see a pitcher, who's just about to release the ball.
Action is the longest section of the Game Face project. We wanted to show all these different ways that women are active, involved, totally unself-conscious in their moment of being an athlete. We have a picture of the highest level of field hockey being played by one of the strongest players in American history and then we have a photograph of girls double Dutch jump roping up in Spanish Harlem.
Women and girls aren't necessarily given a football on their 4th birthday, that they may be given a hula hoop or they may be given a pair of roller skates or they may be given a baton to twirl and so those are the implements that they use and maybe spent hours and hours learning how to master.
People coming to the moment of conclusion after all of the exertion that they've put themselves through to do their best. We wanted to show that culmination, that moment of truth really where they reach the finish line in one way or another symbolically or actually.
In sports as in the rest of your life you finish a task, you finish a challenge and you know, almost instability, you're getting ready for the next one. Maybe you have a few minutes or a few days to enjoy the victory, enjoy the accomplishment or mull over the mistake that you made.
The photograph in the exhibition of a woman 100 years ago standing beside her bicycle looking out into the horizon. She's got one of greatest game faces on in the entire exhibition. I think women have always shown determination, grit. I think women have had to put their game face on to take sports to the level that it now.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Music now, music for the ears and the eyes. New Orleans jazz and heritage festival celebrated its 35th year this year and from its beginning, photographer Michael P. Smith, has been documenting the artists who make the music. As we see it, making pictures of music might be one of the toughest assignments around and Mr. Smith has succeeded splendidly. His images are silent but they are not quiet.
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QUINT DAVIS, NEW ORLEANS JAZZ & HERITAGE FESTIVAL: 2004 is the 35th anniversary of the New Orleans jazz and heritage festival. It started in 1970 in a little square downtown called Congo Square, which is the birthplace of African music in North America. Mike Smith has been a part of jazz fest the entire 35 years. Mike Smith is really the chronicler of this culture. HERMAN LEONARD, PHOTOGRAPHER & FRIEND: He's sort of a laid back, quiet fellow. Doesn't go out and push his work. Jazz is the only true really uniquely American art form and here we have Michael who has done this wonderful documentation of all of these people.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We came up with the idea this year to have our 35th anniversary through the eyes of Mike Smith, outside at the festival, all around the grounds, we have these kiosks and they're called Mike Smith memories. The people who are at the festival are just like us and just like Mike Smith. Many of them have been here 10 and 20 years.
LESLIE SMITH, MICHAEL P. SMITH'S DAUGHTER: My father has Parkinson's and he's moving a little slower than he used to. So I've been carrying his stuff, just kind of being there if he needs something, and going around -- taking photos like he always has.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There are generations that have grown up with Mike Smith taking their picture. Older generations that have passed on and then new generations come along. So we can trace the growth, the young Neville brothers, the older Neville Brothers, Bonnie Raitt in the '70s. B.B. King in the '70s. B. B. King played on the festival in 1972, to make that leap, our little hometown festival had the king of the blues, it was a great occasion, and Mike Smith took this classic, classic picture of him. Well, the next year in 1973, B.B. came back. We got this picture, had it framed, gave it to him on the stage, and that was me giving him the picture.
Just as live music itself is a participatory art form, it's one of the only art forms where the audience and the artist experience the art together. Well, Mike smith is like that. He's like music because at our festival, when people look at his pictures, they're experiencing something that they experienced before.
JON CLEARY, MUSICIAN: The pictures he has of musicians are musicians at work. You can see them busting the sweat, really digging in, kind of the essence of what New Orleans music is all about.
SMITH: My father captures energy. The thing that interests him when he's photographing is energy, passion. When he feels that moment, when it's just raw, aliveness, that's what he shoots. He feels that what he's capturing is what's special. Maybe in his secret heart he understands how amazingly important all of this is, but I think ultimately for him, he just wanted to make sure that someone knew that there was a record of this amazing, wonderful culture we have here. You know, and that someone would know.
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BROWN: Coming up next, what happens when man and nature intercept, a most unusual way of seeing a most unusual river.
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BROWN: Ansel Adams, who made a name for himself photographing scenes in nature, put it awfully well. Almost anything man-made that enduring in time acquires some qualities of the natural. Bleak shapes, he wrote, grow into a kind of magic that once seen cannot easily be ignored. Which brings us to the Los Angeles River, which, if we were being honest, is really a drainage ditch, yet which through the eyes of photographer John Humble cannot be ignored.
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JOHN HUMBLE, PHOTOGRAPHER: I began photographing the river, because I had been photographing L.A. for a long time. And I kind of ignored river, like everybody else. It's not really a river any more. As you can see, it's a big concrete ditch now. I just decided to do it in an almost pictorial way, to take something as ugly as this and really create beautiful, beautiful photographs from it. So a lot of it had to do with lighting. It had to do with my selection of the time, the angle, all that sort of thing.
Up through the Glendale narrows, they could not put concrete on the bottom because the water level is too close to the surface. And so there are areas through there where there's a lot of vegetation that grows along the river so it looks more like a real river, because it looks like fall in Vermont. I created that much through lighting, because the fact is that the sun is going down and it creates all of those reds and oranges and yellows across the foliage, so it looks like fall. In fact it's all green because of the light on it. And then I shot under the bridge and the river is traveling under the bridge and you see all the pillars there. Again, that's only a photograph because of the lighting. Because of the fact that it was very late afternoon and the light, kind of golden light was coming under and illuminating that area under the bridge.
I think a lot people look at the power wires in Los Angeles and think they're relatively ugly. In a way I guess they are, although, of course they remind me of Paris and the Eiffel Tower. But they also are a stark reminder of how we live in southern California, that everything is visible and they help me in a way compositionally, when I'm making photographs, because I can use them to slice up areas that would normally not have anything happening in them.
That's the head waters of the Los Angeles River, and right there what you see is, you see Royal Talabasis (ph) and Bell Creek and when they come together right behind Kanoga (ph) Park High School, that's the beginning of the Los Angeles river. All of the water from all around here, from the mountains, from the streets, everywhere, flows into this river and 51 miles of concrete later, it gets taken out to the ocean in Long Beach.
I think that it's too bad more people in Los Angeles aren't aware of the really rich history that this river has. The reason that Los Angeles is here today as a city is because of this river and by the time I finished photographing the river I actually felt some affection for this river.
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BROWN: After a year filled with reminders of the hatreds that divide us, we now turn to the ties that bind. They're captured in a book from the lowly planet travel guide people. The book is called "One Planet: See It for Yourself." So -- see it for yourself.
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ANN HOPKING, PUBLISHER, ONE PLANET: Our philosophy has always been to encourage people to just get out there and just do it. It is about taking that challenge, taking that leap. We wanted to show images from all over the world. We wanted to show people doing all manner of different things. It was one of those situations where the concept developed sort of organically and it became a book about the connections between people, between landscapes, between buildings, between emotions.
There's a crowd shot in Italy and a crowd shot in India. What I love about the one in Italy is, if you look at the image carefully, you'll see that everybody's talking to the person next to them there at a horse race or some kind of carnival, out for the day, totally immersed in one another.
In the other image in India, it's a kind of spiritual gathering and it's actually a moment of prayer. You can tell that the people are connecting with each other in exactly the same way. We have three monks walking through a lily pond walking sometime in the late evening. It's a very calm kind of image. There are just three men walking together in friendship and solidarity. Then on the other page, we have three men jumping in a rubbish dump somewhere in the Philippines and they're doing exactly the same thing. There are three young men enjoying themselves, enjoying each other and the background of the image is actually quite similar.
This was a pairing that was between an ancient medieval temple in Rajastan (ph) in India and a much more contemporary temple in Kyoto, in Japan. There's a colonnade, pillars running through both images. The red on the left, the white on the right and the person walking through it exactly at the same spot. So, again it gives you a sense of the universality of what we do, wherever we are, may be experiencing exactly the same things.
Sometimes it was simply the way that the images looked the same. So we had in one pairing some drums lined up against the wall. And then on the other side we had some pots of dried paint and they took the same shapes. So often the connections were about the similarity in the way things looked, and then on other occasions it was about the similarity in landscapes.
We talk about the canyons of Manhattan or Michigan Avenue and can you see that, in fact, the way that light carves out shapes is just the same in the Grand Canyon as it is on a skyscraper. So it was really something to say, you know, when you actually look at things, look at them as though it were with a fresh eye every time. You imagine that in some way they're probably experiencing quite a similar thing, a similar emotion about the challenge of conquering something on your own and about being out there in this sort of vast and amazing space of nature, and being, really, on your own, challenging nature in that way.
What I really want is for people to read this book, to take some inspiration from it and to get out there and do things that they wouldn't perhaps have thought they could do, or would be too scared to do, and really just take the risk. Take the challenge, and see the world for yourself.
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BROWN: Truth be told, there is little on the program we are more proud of than the fact that we took still photos and brought them to television in ways that no one else has. It took a little bit of risk to try it and an awful lot of talent by our producers to pull it off, and when you string it all together as we did tonight, we are especially proud. We can hardly wait for next year's batch. Have a great New Year's and a good night, from all of us at NEWSNIGHT.
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