All In The Family

When you are married to a photographer, there is good news and bad news.  The good news is you are likely going to have a pictoral record of a lot of moments in your life.  What better way to get great pictures from that amazing vacation than to bring along your own personal photographer.  But the bad news is your life becomes an open book and there is always a camera lens popping up in the least expected places.  My wife knows this so very well!


She is a great subject.  And that's a good thing because I enjoy taking her picture.  There are just too many visual opportunities to pass up around the house.  Here are three recent moments.

Selma To Montgomery

On a sunny, surreal March day in 1995, I was in Montgomery, Alabama to record an event that was 30 years in the making.  In 1965, the most famous march in the history of the American Civil Rights movement shook the soul of the country.  Members of the SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Council) and SNCC (Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee) had set out on a peaceful protest going from Selma to Montgomery - the Alabama capital - to bring attention to the discrimination and inequality that was an everyday reality of life for blacks in America in 1965.  As they approached the Edmund Pettus Bridge, Alabama State Troopers and local police blocked their way. When the marchers refused to turn around, the troopers and police waded into the crowd, firing tear gas and swinging billy clubs.   Over 50 people were hospitalized and the images of Americans violently turning on their fellow Americans were broadcast  around the world.  This is one of a few events that is often credited with turning the tide against institutionalized racism in the US. 

The tone of violence that played out that day had been set from the Alabama governor's office in Montgomery. George Wallace had been spewing racial hatred for years.  On that day - March 7,  1965 -  Wallace's view of the world had created what became known as "Bloody Sunday".  But, two weeks later, the same marchers, joined by many others, were protected by Federal troops and escorted the 54 miles to the state capital.  Wallace refused to meet the marchers and the civil rights struggles continued.  

But by 1995 the thirty years that had passed since that ugly day had given birth to a changed George Wallace.  He had run for President in 1968 and, during that campaign,  an attempted assassination that had left him paralyzed from the waist down.  Time and events had altered Wallace's view of the world and when he heard there was going to be a re-enactment of the Selma to Montgomery march to mark the 30th anniversary, he decided he had a chance to right a wrong.  He met the marchers in Montgomery and, though he wasn't able to speak, his mere presence was a stirring spectacle and battered symbol of how far he and the country had come on the issue of civil rights.  

I was sent to cover the story in March 1995 by The New York Times.  It was a particular thrill for me to be there as the civil rights movement had captured my attention as a young child and was one of the main factors in me choosing to becoming a photojournalist.  Although I was too young to meet or cover Dr. Martin Luther King, being in Montgomery on this day, at this event, was a moment that gave me a small sense of what those times must have been like. The story and photograph ran on page one of the NY Times.  You can read the story by clicking here.