Art
Flagging Spirits Stanley J. Forman’s shot of a 1976 demonstration in Boston, published in the Boston Herald American. photo: Stanley J. Forman
A soldier sleeping in a downpour sheltered only by his poncho; a young napalm-victim running naked toward the camera; Coretta Scott King at her husband’s funeral; Jack Ruby shooting James Earl Ray*; the second plane crashing into the World Trade Center towers. Teenagers kissing; a police officer bent low, talking to a young parade-viewer; Boris Yeltsin dancing onstage at a rock concert; Babe Ruth acknowledging the crowd at his last game. These are just some of the 130 stunning images currently on display in “The Pulitzer Prize Photographs: Capture the Moment,” through Aug. 20 at the Frist Center.
That many of these photographs have become part of our national memory doesn’t lessen the impact of seeing them in person, in gallery-sized prints, hung by decade on crisp white walls. Next to each photograph, in a simple black frame, is a brief account of the story behind it, beginning with a statement from the photographer that distills the essence of the picture. This arrangement allows “Capture the Moment,” which includes images from 1942, the first year the photo prize was awarded, through the 2006 winners, to celebrate the men and women who combined skill, art and courage to get the shots. It’s a testament to the enduring power of the images that curator Cyma Rubin was asked to remove David C. Turney’s photograph of Tiananmen Square, taken the day after the 1989 demonstration, when formalizing a deal to send the pictures to China. That leg of the tour was cancelled.
These photographs will have a permanent home in the Newseum, the Freedom Forum-funded news museum in Washington, D.C., whose new building is scheduled to open on Pennsylvania Avenue in the fall of 2007. “Capture the Moment” was commissioned by Nippon TV, and was first shown in Tokyo in 1998. “No American museum would take it until the Newseum came along,” says Rubin, who was cultural producer at the network at the time. In its present incarnation, the show has traveled around the world since 2000 and is booked through 2009.
In putting together the exhibit, Rubin culled through up to 20 images in the winning portfolios from each year in two categories: breaking news and features. “When I choose the photograph, it isn’t necessarily the photograph that you see in the newspaper,” she says. “I always try to look for something that maybe you haven’t seen or something that tells another story.” For example, she wanted viewers to get a sense of Iraq’s frequent sandstorms, so she chose an image of soldiers in which the dust has created a striking red hue.
Rubin knows all of the living photographers and was also acquainted with several of the dead ones. She accompanied many of them back to the locations where their award-winning photographs were shot for Moment of Impact, an Emmy-winning documentary that aired in 1999 and highlighted six photographs. (She’ll share details and anecdotes about the photographers and their images during a July 21 lecture at the museum.) She says she looks for “the spirit of the photographer, which takes in the talent [as well as] that moment that they saw.” The talent part of the equation often involves seeking a new perspective on even press conference shoots, which can give new depth to an image. Consider Slava Veder’s 1973 photo of returning POW Col. Robert L. Stirm. We see Stirm’s back at the left of the photograph: his family rushing toward him at Travis Air Force Base. “Because his back was to the camera, he became the icon of the returning hero,” Rubin observes.
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“We tried to edit these images to the most efficient and powerful moment,” says Margaret Engel, the Newseum’s managing editor. “It is sort of a gut feeling—you know it when you see it.” Or as Rubin says, “Some photographs just ring.”
Even when chronicling disturbing trends or decade-defining problems—famines, floods, drug abuse—the photographs are often impressively artistic. Kevin Carter’s haunting “Waiting Game for Sudanese Child,” which won the 1994 feature prize, is a masterpiece of composition and color: a tiny child sits hunched in the foreground, while in the background a buzzard seems both to mimic her position and to eye her menacingly. Stan Grossfield’s “Ethiopian Famine” (1984), shot in black-and-white, reveals both the misery and dignity of his subjects. “This is like a Renaissance painting, ‘Madonna and Child’ and yet in the horrid poverty,” Rubin says. Another compelling image is from Clarence J. Williams III’s “Orphans of Addiction” series (1997), in which a haggard mother holds her daughter in a shot reminiscent of Dorothea Lange’s 1936 photograph, “Migrant Mother.”
Is it surprising that such photographs resonate so strongly with us, even in a time when almost everyone is armed with a digital camera, photo-ready cell phone and the ability to follow breaking news on the Internet? “I think [this] actually elevates the still image,” Engel says. “When we have movies on our cell phones and screens everywhere, you feel that you’re being assaulted by images and information. These isolate emotions and let you reflect and have some contemplative moments, and I think that we need that.”
*Correction: Should read, “Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald.”