IN-DEPTH

Introduction

Have photographs lost their economic value? One might make that case by connecting the dots, starting with the consolidation of photo agencies, then the transition from film to digital image capture, followed by the conjunction of crowd-sourcing with the World Wide Web and social media, which ultimately led to underserved publishers (particularly those looking for stock photos) and the sorry circumstances that challenge photographers who try to earn a living today. The good news is that photography (both still & video) remains vital to every aspect of commerce. Business needs photography. Its demand is both enduring and universal. Living, breathing photographers are in no danger of being replaced by artificial intelligence or computer-generated imagery because, if it were even plausible to supplant cameras and lenses entirely with algorithms, the mind’s eye of a photographer would still have to invent — and code — those algorithms: what would be seen as a photograph. …

PHOTOGRAPHY

Let me tell you about the first time I saw Groucho Marx, who happens to be the subject of my very first portrait. But my story begins before I took up photography.

Protect your bagels; put lox on them. It sounds like something Groucho might say. But it was just a clever admonition from the locals to visit Nate ’n’ Al’s Delicatessen in Beverly Hills. I was there eating brunch with several buddies before heading over to the Fairfax Theater in West Hollywood for a Marx Brothers double feature. Their zany humor from the Depression era was enjoying a revival on the silver screen that took my generation by storm. …

PHOTOGRAPHY

I ’ve said it many times: actors are uncomfortable in front of a still camera because they’re not acting. When they have no lines, no action, and no recourse but to be themselves they can feel vulnerable while being stared at through a lens — “exposed,” if you will. Let me tell you about a quintessential example. (How about that! Two puns in one paragraph.)

My opportunity to photograph Anthony Quinn came during a business stopover he made in LA, traveling between production locations for two unmemorable films. (Even great thespians have to make a living.) His most memorable role was Zorba in “Zorba the Greek.” Lots of people thought he was Greek. But his grandfather emigrated to Mexico from Ireland in the 19th century. The future star of American movies was born in Chihuahua, in 1915, in the midst of the Mexican Revolution.* His father rode with Pancho Villa. Later in life he filled up the screen with his performances, always passionate and often profane, in films like “The Guns of Navarone,” “Lawrence of Arabia,” “The Shoes of the Fisherman,” and Fellini’s “La Strada.” The Academy honored him twice with an Oscar; but not for “Zorba” in which he gave — more than merely memorable — one of the most iconic performances in cinema history.** Then again, he played Chief Crazy Horse in “They Died with Their Boots On” starring Errol Flynn as General George Armstrong Custer. In the movies, Quinn always played the macho man; virility incarnate, bigger-than-life. …

PHOTOGRAPHY

Part One

A Time magazine assignment took me to Sausalito to cover the outset of an historic journey: the first non-stop, trans-continental flight over North America in a balloon. It would be a milestone achievement in aviation history. Kitty Hawk, referencing the most singular aviation milestone of all, was the name of the craft (the gondola, actually), co-piloted by Maxie Anderson, a businessman and gubernatorial prospect from New Mexico, and his son Kristian. Maxie helped pioneer Albuquerque’s International Balloon Fiesta, an annual mass ascent of hot air balloons, arguably the most photographed event in the world: five hundred gargantuan confections arrayed willy-nilly on terra firma then loosed from gravity by igniting an open flame underneath each one. …

A powerful black sedan sped through the capital chasing two American flags whipping above the hood. A short motorcade kept up behind in single file. The streets were essentially empty of other automobiles; a smattering of Russian jalopies, rows of miasmatic buses. This was typical on any given day in 1981. Traffic was bicycles, thousands and thousands of them pedaled by uniformly-costumed commuters; men and women buttoned up to their chins in ill-fitting tunics; green ones and just-as-baggy blue ones. Many of them wore caps adorned with a red plastic star in front.

Daylight spilled inside the Hongqi limousine from a turbid sky through windows that framed what looked like a newsreel streaming by. I sat on a jump-seat facing the secretary of state; the two of us alone in back. He was in shirtsleeves, shuffling loose-leaf documents on his lap and casting glances through half-readers raked down the bridge of his nose at a newspaper laid out beside him on top of his jacket. He seemed distracted: a sigh, a deep breath, a backhanded brushing-away of his tie. …

Gore Vidal, that perspicacious paladin of the pen, wielded a sharp nib and was keen to skewer his opponents with it. Those who were foolhardy enough to joust with him orally were soon exsanguinated by a tongue-lashing and should have known better than to engage in a battle of wits only half-prepared. He had a mean streak and was unapologetic about it. “Beneath my cold exterior,” he claimed, “once you break the ice, you find cold water.”

Eugene Luther Gore Vidal Jr. rounded off his well-connected name as he thought would befit an aspiring author. As Gore Vidal, and no longer merely aspiring in 1960, he made his political debut in an unsuccessful bid for a Democratic congressional seat from his home in New York. It’s worth mentioning that his maternal grandfather, Thomas P. Gore, was one of the first two United States Senators from Oklahoma at statehood in 1907. Much later, having established himself in California, Vidal tried politics again, pitting himself against the state’s erstwhile “Governor Moonbeam,” Jerry Brown, in a race for the Senate. Moonbeam wasn’t Vidal’s invention; it was Chicago newspaperman Mike Royko. But the moniker was useful to Vidal in the Democratic primary, given that “Piccolo Pete” Wilson and Maureen “Big Mo” Reagan, the president’s daughter, were his challengers on the Republican side. …

My friends Tim and Penelope invited me to meet them at their house and drive to a bar in Oakland. It was our first visit to Eli’s Mile High Club. A “dive” was how they pitched it. Not a dive bar because that would have been redundant. Everybody knew dive meant lowlife saloon, or a honky-tonk if there was live music. And it was taken for granted to be blues music, if not R&B, unless it was country; but a crude joint in any case. Eli’s fit that mold, rough around the edges. The neighborhood that is; but not so rough you’d expect to see a fight break out inside. Well, not unless you count Eli getting murdered by his girlfriend. Knifed or gunshot, I don’t know. It happened. But other than that, simply speaking, a dive is where you check your conceits at the door and enjoy some cheap liquor. Maybe plunge into a pity party. Often alone. Once in a while with friends. …

Is anyone else reminded of Yeats’s “The Second Coming” — the widening gyre . . . the center cannot hold . . .? Forget the next verse with its biblical overtones because, before one reads that far, you’ve already got, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned. That’s enough to scare the bejesus out of anyone.

The human species is locked in a cage fight with an indifferent foe. It has no fists, no fangs or claws but it is a cunning conniver of the healthy and optimistic who would doom the vulnerable. Darkly droll, abetted by the insidious curse of narcissism, it could be the Boomer Doomer slouching toward Bethlehem. “It’s one person coming in from China,” snuffled our Narcissist-in-Chief. “One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.” …