By Rosette Royale, Contributing Writer
Our concept of contemporary
history is forever married to the storytelling powers of photography. Consider
the Apollo 11 splashdown.
On July 21, 1969,
Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon, gliding out from
lunar-landing module Apollo 11 onto the Sea of Tranquility. Three days later,
Apollo 11, containing Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. and Michal Collins,
splashed down in the Pacific Ocean. One black-and-white photo from the event
reveals a white plume of ocean water as the spacecraft, with three open
parachutes above it, strikes the Pacific. A color shot shows three astronauts
in gray spacesuits sitting in an orange life raft awaiting helicopter pick-up.
In another, a Navy helicopter motors off.
Great photos, but
they weren’t easy to take, according to photographer Barry Sweet.
An Associated Press
photographer at the time, Sweet was on a Navy aircraft carrier. Usually, Sweet
would take photos and send the images back to AP over an FM signal. That’s how
he transmitted the wire photo. But being in the Pacific placed him below the
equator in the Southern Hemisphere, which meant any signal sent from the ship
would head off into space and never come back to Earth. What to do?
Sweet realized
there was a TV on board. Navy personnel told him it worked via satellite. Then
it struck him: bounce the image off a satellite to send back to Earth. So the
earliest pictures of the Apollo 11 splashdown traveled from ship to satellite
to San Francisco to the front page of newspapers. Sweet said it was the first
time AP employed a satellite to send images.
Based in Seattle,
Sweet worked for AP for more than 30 years. During that time he captured
soldiers returning from the Vietnam War, Jimi Hendrix’s funeral, the aftermath
of the eruption of Mount St. Helens, the construction of the Tacoma Dome and
the destruction of the Kingdome. These pictures and others grace the pages of
“Split Seconds: Four Decades of News Photography from the Pacific Northwest and
Beyond” (Raleigh Press, $19.95). The book is a time capsule of local and
national contemporary history.
But books sometimes
require book tours, so Sweet journeyed from his current home outside Las Vegas
to the Northwest. While he says he’s thrilled the book is out, it comes with a
price: Because nearly every photo in the book was taken while he worked for AP,
he doesn’t own the rights. He had to purchase them to run them in a book he
self-produced (Raleigh Press is named after his wife, Raleigh). Even so, when
he talked about his work while seated recently in the Panama Hotel, where
photos on the wall depict the era when local Japanese residents were interned,
Sweet spoke with the tone of a proud father. And over the course of nearly an
hour, we flipped through the book and discussed history, photography and just
another day at the office.
Rosette Royale:
This book covers four decades. So let’s start in the early ones.
Barry Sweet: The early stuff, basically, is the
anti-Vietnam war movement. I was living in Madison, Wis., and I was working for
a paper called the Wisconsin State Journal. The University of Wisconsin was a
hotbed for protesting, and they were really organizing demonstrations all over
the country. I took pictures of the demonstrations in Madison, so that’s where
my thing started. If you look at the pictures, these were hippies. Their
haircuts and the way they look: So normal, but back in those days they were the
radicals.
This particular
picture (of the smiling woman clapping) was taken here in Seattle, on Fourth
Avenue. When the Vietnam War was slowing down, the first troops came back to
Fort Lewis, McChord (Air Force Base). They brought them into Seattle and gave
them a welcome home parade. This is that particular parade, and this is a lady
who was watching troops march down Fourth. There’s a lot of talk about how
Vietnam vets, people didn’t think much of them when they came home. Not true in
Seattle. The first vets who came back got a ceremony. I believe the rest of the
vets in the other parts of the country, they were treated as: “Why were you
doing this? Don’t you have any brains?” But here in Seattle they gave them
respect.
R.R.: Why?
B.S.: I really couldn’t tell you. But there were
people lined up two and three deep. It was amazing.
There’s also
another story: Everything (for AP publication) went through a picture editor. I
looked at (the pictures the editor selected) and said, “I don’t see the picture
of this lady. Whatever happened to her?” The editor told me, “Well, I don’t
remember it.” So I dug up the picture and showed it to him, he says, “Yeah, that’s
not bad. We’ll put it on second cycle.” Back in those days, most towns had two
newspapers, a morning and an afternoon. Morning would be the first cycle, p.m.
the second. So he was delaying it for 12 hours. Not more than 20 minutes after
we sent that picture, the phone started ringing like crazy. It was New York,
and they were really upset. They wanted to know why that picture was a second
cycle instead of first, because they thought it was amazing. But that picture
almost didn’t even get published.
From Wisconsin I
moved to Topeka, Kan. I worked for a paper called The Capital-Journal. I
photographed Martin Luther King in 1965. A lot of people I photograph, you have
no idea what they’re going to become, what their future is. Martin Luther King
was just a preacher who came to Kansas to talk about (Brown vs.) Board of
Education. These are all tornado pictures, victims of the tornadoes. One of the
things I love to do is to take pictures of emotions. This particular picture, a
woman took to the storm cellars when the storm was coming. She left her wedding
ring on her dresser. She’s trying to find her ring, and she can’t. It’s just
the emotions: This is what I love, this is Barry.
R.R.: What is it that gets to you?
B.S.: I think people are more important than things.
I look at you, and I see your face, and I see your emotions. That’s the way I
photograph people. It’s not so much an event as who is the person at the event.
R.R.:
So let’s head into the 1970s. Ahh.
Here’s a picture, this funeral of Jimi Hendrix.
B.S.: It was just a normal day at the office. I
knew who Jimi Hendrix was, and I knew they brought his body back. I contacted
the family, his father. I asked about the funeral and if I could photograph,
and they said, “Come on out. We’ll make a space. We’re not going to let you in
the chapel, but you’ll have other access.” And it was, like I say, another day
at the office, but there was a lot of emotion there. I did a lot with funerals
here in town. I did Bruce Lee, who’s buried up on Capitol Hill. I did his son
Brandon, who’s also buried up on Capitol Hill. I did (U.S. Senator Henry)
“Scoop” Jackson, (U.S. Senator) Warren Magnuson. If there was a funeral, I was
probably gonna go to it.
R.R.:
When you’re at a funeral, do you become
emotional?
B.S.: I don’t. My wife doesn’t understand it. I
don’t know, but it doesn’t seem to faze me. I do get emotional about people
sick that I know or injuries, or somebody retiring, or a high school or college
graduation. I don’t think it’s because I have no respect. Maybe I was too busy
just taking pictures. I don’t know if that makes sense. I’ve seen a lot of
disasters, I’ve seen a lot of people in trouble, I’ve seen a lot of people die.
(Looking at another
photo) It’s the total eclipse. I shot that outside of Olympia on Interstate 5.
R.R.:
How do you shoot an eclipse? You can’t
look at it, can you?
B.S.: I did research, and they told me that if I
buy this silver thing like aluminum foil and put it over the lens of my camera,
my eyes would be protected.
I didn’t expect to
see it because I was in Seattle, and I got up in the morning and you couldn’t
see anything: fog. So I figured I’ll drive south on Interstate 5. I got down
near Olympia and got a flat tire and had to pull over. A state patrolman came
and said he’d send somebody to get a tow truck. And I’m sitting on the side of
the road, and it’s overcast. All of a sudden, the sky parted. The clouds
disappeared, and it went into totality. I grabbed my camera out of the trunk,
set it up, watched it and took pictures. The repairman took pictures. Soon
after the totality, fogged up again: You couldn’t see it again. It was luck,
totally luck.
R.R.:
So
the 1980s. Now on May 18, 1980, I lived in Silver Spring, Md., and I was in
junior high. I remember hearing about Mount St. Helen’s erupting, and I told
myself that I always wanted to see that area of the world. What was it like to
see it?
B.S.: I was there every day for two weeks prior to
the eruption. I was staying in a motel at the base of the mountain. I would set
up positions and shoot pictures daily of the steam eruptions. My wife and I had
plans to go to Paris, and it got to a point where I had to leave the mountain
because we were gonna go on a trip. And I left. That first day we were in
Paris, we’re watching TV and there’s this video of Mount St. Helen’s blowing
up. And I wasn’t there. After all the preliminary stuff and planning, I wasn’t
there. When I got back, about a week later, every location where I had set up
to take pictures was totally destroyed, every one of them. Not one existed. So
my going to Paris with my wife saved my life.
I’m a lucky person.
I did the riots in Watts (in August 1965, after a white California Highway
Patrol officer pulled over and arrested a black motorist). I did the riots in
South Central (in April 1992, linked to the acquittal of four white Los Angeles
police officers in the videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King). And
we would drive in pairs in L.A. wearing bulletproof vests in rental cars,
rolling down the windows. One guy would drive; one guy would take pictures out
of his passenger window. That’s how we covered these things. A news
photojournalist is not a safe profession.
R.R.:
You don’t get emotional at events, but what about terror?
B.S.: I’m cautious. When I get to a position that
I think is dangerous, I immediately change from the normal camera that I have
to a camera with a really long, telephoto lens: Don’t put yourself in the
position where you’re in danger if you can help it. They wanted to send me to
Vietnam, once as a photographer and once as a photo editor chief. I refused. I
wasn’t scared of the war: I didn’t want to shoot a war every day. So they left
me here and put me on riot duty and other stuff.
R.R.: They
have riot duty?
B.S.: We would go where the riots were, yeah. I’d
be in Seattle; they’d have a riot in Los Angeles. Before you knew it I was on
an airplane to Los Angeles. The AP had a special group of photographers, a
younger group, and they did a lot of traveling. I was part of that group.
R.R.:
All
right. The 1990s.
B.S.: I probably had more pictures in the old days
of Bill Gates than anybody, including maybe Microsoft. I met Bill early on. He
had, I think, one building in Redmond, maybe a couple dozen employees. I think
they called the AP and said, “We’re working on a computer thing, you might want
to come out and meet him.” I went out and met Bill. Bill and I kind of looked a
little similar at that time. And I took pictures, and he seemed comfortable
with me. Bill always wanted to be an international figure, not a Seattle
person. So he or his staff periodically would call and say, “If you’re free,
Bill’s meeting someone. Why don’t you pop over?” It would be CEO of Intel or
Comcast or (founder of Dell Computers) Michael Dell. It would be me, Bill, the
other person, maybe a pr person from Microsoft. I’d come out and put the
pictures on the wire because he knew it would go around the world. And that’s
what he wanted. I would get phone calls from The Seattle Times and the P.I.
after they’ve seen the pictures and say, “Did we miss a press conference?”
Gates did not want his main exposure to be The Seattle Times and P.I. He wanted
it to be in The New York Times, The Washington Post and LA Times. He liked me
and trusted me. As he got bigger, the access disappeared.
R.R.:
You’ve got a photo here of this plane on
a wire.
B.S.: I always had police radios in my office, so
I could monitor the Seattle Police Department, Fire Department. And I heard
about a plane crash at Boeing Field. I immediately got in my car, and when I
got there this is what I saw. The pilot was still in the plane. Eventually they
put a fire engine and one of the big ladders up there and took him off. He just
said he made a mistake in his navigation. Like I say, another day at the
office.
R.R.:
I don’t know if people thought it was so
wonderful during WTO, however.
B.S.: It was just another
riot scene. The demonstrators obviously wanted to be photographed: They wanted
their story to be out. The police at that time were very cautious because they
were worried about their image. They put up with the media, so we could pretty
much go anywhere we wanted. There are a few [protestors], they were just out to
cause trouble and break windows. The police loaded people in vans and did all
that right in front of you.
R.R.: Here we are, in the 2000s.
B.S.: Another anti-war era. This was in the Tacoma
Dome (indicates photo of woman kissing man in fatigues). This was the largest
group of reservists from Washington that were activated and sent to Iraq. This
was their departure ceremony. I didn’t want to get in their face. I was up in
the stands with a long lens, and I didn’t interfere with anything that was
going on. But it made a really emotional picture. They probably never even knew
this was done until somebody saw it in the newspaper.
R.R.:
If you could take a picture in Seattle
now, what would it be?
B.S.: Whatever I run into. I took pictures
yesterday of Ste. Michelle, the winery. My wife and I took a camera, went out
there and spent two, two-and-a-half hours in the Woodinville area taking
pictures. I do that everywhere I go.
Last time I was in
London, we stayed in an apartment, and my wife tells me there’s a castle down
the road: Kensington Palace. Took my camera, went down there. I have pictures
of the grand halls, the bedrooms; they had things from Lady Di all over the
place. It was wonderful. Came back, just recently they announce who’s gonna
move there? Prince William and his wife, Kate. Well, of course that place was
secured, closed off. As it turned out, I had pictures inside. These pictures
went to the different media sources that I still work with and they sold them
worldwide.
So you take a
camera when you go someplace: You never know what you’re going to run into.
Reprinted from Real
Change Newspaper, Seattle, Wash.
This article appears in 2013-01-18.