All language subtitles for Get.the.Picture.2013-Eng

- Honest to God.

I mean, I was only 93
when I fell in love

with an 84 year old.

We've now had more
than a year together

and it's wonderful.

If I can do it, if we can do it,

why can't everybody?

There has been a
recent fad in Paris.

I don't know who started it

of buying a padlock
and putting the names

of two lovers on it

and then locking the
padlock to the railing

of one of the bridges
over the Seine

and since everybody was doing it

my lover, Pat, and I decided
we would join the crowd

and now there are so many
locks we can't even find ours.

Here I am, practically 95

and I am having the
time of my life.

I am just having a ball.

I don't know, it is just crazy,

it's just absolutely crazy.

Pat and I laugh
almost every day.

At how crazy our lives are.

She's only 86

and I can't resist
being an optimist.

I don't know why.

The world is in terrible shape,

but maybe it's because
there is so much to do

that I'm optimistic.

I have realized
how fortunate I am

when I look at the unfortunate.

I have lived through
terrible times,

but I have been lucky enough.

I've never had to
worry about where

my next meal was coming from.

I have seldom had to worry
about where I would sleep.

I'm grateful for what has
happened to me in the past.

Photo journalists
seek the truth.

They feel that it's important

for people around the world

to know the truth
about the world.

Photographers,
war photographers,

the best, they all had
a basic understanding

of the tragedy of war

and that's why the
serious photojournalists

are so dedicated

and I think that dedication
can come through the camera.

You have to be a little crazy

to be a photographer
who goes to war

and who really goes to war
and gets up to the front.

To do it seriously

means a great
personal sacrifice.

Truth is the objective
of good journalism.

Beauty is secondary
to the truth,

but the great photographers
usually manage

to get pictures which are not
only truthful, but beautiful.

There is a tragic
beauty in the world,

which has been shown
over the centuries

in paintings and sculpture

and it's recognized now
in photography as well.

I am a journalist,
but not a reporter

and not a photographer.

I am a picture editor.

For more than 50 years I have
hired scores of photographers,

some of them famous,
others unknown.

I have testified
for them in court

and nursed them through injury,

fed them, buried them.

I have bought and
sold their pictures

for what must total
millions of dollars.

I have sent them
out on assignment,

sometimes with a few
casual suggestions,

other times with
detailed instructions,

but always the
challenge is the same,

get the picture.

The editor chooses
among those pictures

to tell it as it was or was it.

Right or wrong, the
picture is the last word.

That's one of Manhattan's
historic sites.

I spent my wedding night there,

September 30, 1939,

my first of three wives.

Hitler had just
rolled into Poland

and we were apprehensive we
couldn't even get married.

I would be too
busy with war news.

I was working for Life Magazine,

but sure enough we
got married in Chicago

at eleven o'clock,
flew to New York.

It was a hotel just a few
doors from Essex House.

Essex House has a lighted
sign that shows up a night

and one night some
pranksters either burned out

or extinguished the
two first letters

which was kind of a joke
around New York for a while.

It took a while to repair.

Anyway I just,

I get nostalgic when
I see this place.

Can't help it.

I had begun working
for Life Magazine

as an office boy in 1939.

Life was the number one large
format illustrated magazine

in the entire world and by '43

it was selling probably three
or four million copies a week.

These were the days
before television.

It was hard for Life to
keep up with the demand.

The lead story in Life had
to be strong pictorially

or it wouldn't be
the lead story,

so for me, I accepted
that as a principle

and I continue to
this day to think

in terms of picture
first and text second.

Germany invades Poland

in the free state of Danzig.

The efforts and hopes
of diplomats for a
peaceful settlement

are transformed into
the roar of gunfire.

- Almost at the same time

the war broke out in Poland.

Poland is in ruins.

- My wife, Mary
Adele, became pregnant

and we were transferred
to Los Angeles

to what had been usually
called the Hollywood Bureau.

- Once a year,

Hollywood honors
its brightest stars.

Tonight they also
solute the 27,000 men

of the cinema industry now
serving in the armed forces.

- It was quite something

to be a Hollywood Correspondent
for Life Magazine at aged 24

which is what I was
when I arrived there.

The Hollywood Bureau had
provided coverage of movies,

beautiful girls and
cover girls, especially.

That's where I got
my first taste of war

because Pearl Harbor
occurred on my 25th birthday.

So I'll never forget
that birthday.

December 7, 1941,

I was about to
celebrate my birthday

with a dinner that night.

Del, my wife, was in the
kitchen baking a birthday cake

and she had the
radio turned down.

- We
interrupt this program

to bring you a
special news bulletin.

The Japanese have attacked
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, by air,

President Roosevelt
has just announced.

- It produced shockwave
through the whole country

that America was
actually under attack.

- Since the unprovoked

and dastardly attack by Japan,

a state of war

has existed

between the United States
and the Japanese Empire.

- My impulse was for me
to get a photographer

and start photographing whatever
there was to photograph,

but what was there going to
be to photograph, you know?

Pearl Harbor was
a long way away,

so the obvious thing was
for Japanese American Colony

in downtown Los Angeles,
which was called Little Tokyo.

The FBI had gone to work
immediately rounding up

Japanese of the
three generations

and suddenly, instead of
being ordinary fisher folk,

were enemy aliens.

America was in total alarm

and it wasn't long before

thousands of Japanese
were rounded up

and in turn behind
the High Sierras.

With another Life photographer
named Eliot Elisofon,

I went to the assembly
point on the day

the very first convoy
of Japanese Americans

left under army
escort for the camp

called Mandazar in California.

That was the lead story in
Life of the 1st March, 1942.

It was one of the most tragic
episodes in American history.

Then tragedy struck.

Our baby died,

it was a crib death

and it was a terrible shock.

From that time on,

we were just as happy
to be going back east

and I was kind of relieved,
when after a few months later,

I was transferred
back to New York.

Del was fortunately pregnant
when our first child died,

so three months later
we had our second child,

who is now sixty seven,

named Holly.

The first was Mary Heather
and she was Mary Holly.

In the summer of '43

the war was at its worst.

I mean these were grim times

and there was one major spot
open in the Life hierarchy

and that was picture
editor in London.

And when I arrived in '43,
you could see the damage

that had been caused by
the 1940 Blitz everywhere.

Little did we know
that at that very time

the murder of thousands
of Jews would begin

in what is now known
as The Holocaust.

I didn't realize how
truly grim that period was

until the pictures
came to light in 1945.

The invasion of Western
Europe was impending.

We never knew when or
where it would happen.

All over the world

the United States
Army is on the alert

to defend our country
against aggression.

For more than one full year,

they're pouring
into Great Britain

a torrent of war implements,

tanks, guns, weapons
beyond description

and men, American Soldiers,

at the rate of
150,000 every month.

- I had six
photographers, accredited,

working for Life,

but everyone expected
that Robert Capa,

who had already
been covering war,

everyone looked to Capa to
get the Great War pictures.

D-day has come.

Early this morning, the
Allies began the assault

on the North Western face of
Hitler's European fortress.

- I had a full crew of
people waiting in the office

at Dean Street, the
lab staff was waiting

and there were no
pictures, no word.

My deadline for first D-day
issue of Life Magazine

was at 9AM Thursday

and we waited again
all day Wednesday.

It was really getting agonizing.

Here was the greatest
military operation in history

and there were no pictures yet.

Finally, a packet of Capa's
pictures with the actual landing

on the beach, code named Omaha,
came in the early evening.

There was a note to me saying,

"John, all of the
action is all in

"the four rolls
of 35 millimeter."

I ordered the
darkroom to give me

contact prints as
fast as possible.

A few minutes later,
a darkroom lad

came rushing into
my office saying,

"John the films are ruined.

"You were in such a hurry,

"I put them in the
drying cabinet.

"Made the emulsion run

"and there's
nothing to be seen."

I couldn't believe it.

Then I ran back to
the darkroom with him

and I held up the
rolls, one at a time,

and the first three rolls, there
was nothing, just pea soup.

On the fourth roll, thank
God, there were eleven frames

which could be printed.

- So it went
on the beaches of Normandy

this fateful day in June.

Hitler's fortress
had been cracked.

The Great Gamble had been won.

Having accomplished what
many European Military--

- They were the
first the world saw

of the biggest operation
in modern military history.

- I've covered many, if not
most, of the wars in our world

in the last 30 years,

so I've seen certainly
my fair share

of conflict and difficulty

and danger and human suffering

and I wouldn't want to be
pollyannaish about that.

It has marked my life.

It has left a lot of traces

on my heart and my existence.

When I would come
back from trips

that involved a lot of hardship

it was always really
helpful for me

to share what I saw
and felt with John,

who, himself, had known other
people who had, like Capa,

like Cartier-Bresson,

like all of the great
Magnum photographers

and on and on.

That he could share a
sense of perspective.

- Robert Capa, I always
called him either Bob or Capa.

He was one of the first
who covered war candidly

with small cameras.

He was a Hungarian
refugee in France

and had been living in
Paris when the war started.

Bob became, you
know, he was called

"The World's Greatest
War Photographer."

He would have hated that.

He became involved
with those around him.

He talked to the soldiers.

He was one of them.

And it was not so much
his photographic approach

as it was his human
approach to war.

Bob simply shot was there,
but he came in close.

He was kind of a victim
of his own reputation.

He had taken an
extraordinary picture,

covering the Spanish Civil War,

of the Falling Soldier which
is controversial to this day.

It went totally
unquestioned for 30 years

and then, all of a sudden,

a British Journalist
named Phillip Knightley

said that it had
been perhaps set up.

He couldn't have set up
the picture if he wanted to

and I think the picture
was kind of a fluke.

I doubt if he even knew he
had captured that moment

until he finally
saw it published.

For me, the Falling Soldier

was something I never
talked about with Capa

because I think it was a
painful subject for him.

Who wants to profit from
the death of another man,

a comrade, if you wish?

After D-day, the action of
course had shifted to France,

so I decided that I
get to France myself.

Walking ashore on Utah Beach,

I was given a cot
and the same tent

that Capa and two others
correspondents shared

at the first army press camp.

My job was to go to the front
every day with a photographer,

not always a Life photographer.

One day a group of German
prisoners was brought in.

I saw the face of
this child soldier.

He looked to be about fifteen.

I thought as I took his
picture, "You poor kid."

For me, it was like
a lesson in warfare.

I saw...

enough bodies,

enough wounded to realize how,

how terrible war really is.

I am an anti-war person

and yet I've had to cover war.

I have seen blood around me.

I've been shot at personally,

but I was very lucky
in that I truly escaped

the horror of war.

- Journalists
came under sniper attack today

at the Cornithia
Babs Hotel in Tripoli

where numerous foreign
correspondents were based

just days after 33
journalists were shot--

- Sadly,
war correspondents

have become targets
in modern war

and whereas war correspondents
used to be drive

in vehicles marked "press"
and that gave some immunity.

Today's war correspondent is
often a victim of conflict

and we have lost some
brilliant photojournalists

just in the last year.

- Off
your guard for a second

and you were a sniper's target.

- This is
very disturbing.

It's given a new dimension
to war photography

and I am not sure that I
know how to adjust to it.

- We are close to being

in dangerous situations
all the time.

I have had narrow escapes.

I always touch wood.

I have many of my colleagues
who have been wounded,

have been killed

and I'm very lucky, I am proud

that I've managed to
get in and out of places

with myself and my team intact.

Before,

mostly journalists were
viewed by both sides

as a way of getting
their message out.

Journalists were
viewed by and large

as neutral observers

and yes, there were many
journalists who were killed,

who were injured, but by and
large it wasn't deliberate.

They were mostly caught
in the crossfire.

When it got to Bosnia and
the war in the Balkans,

the dynamic shifted

and that was when
journalists started to be

really deliberately targeted

because certain sides didn't
want the story getting out

and that has simply
increased in the years

since the early 90s,

so that right now the
leading cause of death

amongst journalists is
deliberate, it's murder,

amongst journalists
who cover world events

and amongst journalists who
live in those countries.

- I covered a war
in Nagorno-Karabakh.

It was this war between
Azerbaijan and the Armenians.

That was in '93

and because of our history
of working in the caucuses

we were very curious
to go to Chechenya.

As soon as I got there,
all these journalists,

there was a place
called Manuka Square,

they were all standing around

and all of a sudden the Russians
start dropping these bombs

and these people,
they were the target,

and everyone went
running for their lives.

- It was
just then we were told

to flee for our lives

only seconds after
the deafening blast,

the warplanes returned.

- I was with
another photographer

and we went running
into this building

that was nothing but glass.

I mean, it was like something
out of the movie Die Hard,

I mean it was just unbelievable,

glass just exploding everywhere.

I am dropping cameras.

I am dropping films.

I'm ripping off the vest.

I am scared out of our minds.

We ran smack into
this brick wall

and we couldn't go any further.

I thought we were going to
die at that right moment

and then stopped bombing us

and I looked around and I said,

"Holy shit, this is real."

I realized that I was
not a journalist anymore.

I was also a victim.

It became real that the Russians

were really prepared to bomb
Chechenya to smithereens

and they weren't
gonna care if you

were a journalist or whatever.

They were just out to
just totally destroy

and they were dropping
very serious bombs.

We saw a dud once.

It explodes,

makes this great
little firework display

and then it breaks down
and then it's supposed to

unleash all of this metal and...

It's like and you're like,
there is nothing to protect you.

So you really identified
with the people on the ground

and that's what happened.

In the end there was like
I think only 24 journalists

which had covered the story

and the rebels
immediately realized

that these guys
were serious people

and they were going to
stick it out with them

and so they were ready
to give you cars,

they were going to give
you places to stay.

So the whole way of covering
conflicts really changed.

It wasn't like Bosnia,

it wasn't like anything anybody
had ever experienced before.

This was a real war
with a super power.

- The fact that
journalists are targets

is a testimony to the
power of journalism itself

to actually intervene

in the agenda of
the warring parties

who would like so much

to totally control
the agenda themselves,

but once journalists
enter into it

and the mass
awareness is created,

they can no longer totally
control the agenda,

then there is public opinion

and I think the fact that
journalists are willing

to put their lives on the line

is also a testimony to
the fact that they believe

that people's opinions matter.

The mass awareness
counts for something.

- Today, it's become
worse than ever

to become a war photographer,

more hazardous because
there's no front lines.

I can't believe this place.

I came here about the
1st September, 1944

and there was a Sherman
tank right there

and I went to, made my
office at the Hotel Scribe

and then we soon
moved to that building

right on the corner
of Place de Concorde.

I'm pointing to where I
worked. It was incredible.

We were the cat's meow.

We ended up with
two floors there,

but I had never been in Paris.

I had spent four weeks in
Normandy covering combat

and Capa knew I wasn't, he
knew my French was lousy.

Bob said,

"I have a friend
who will help you

"and his name is Henri
Cartier-Bresson," so what?

So the next day, he came to
the door with his bicycle

and we spent the
whole day together.

He was to become one of the
world's most famous photographs.

Perhaps the most
famous photographer
of the 20th century.

So many things were
going to happen

that I couldn't
even have imagined.

It never once
occurred to me that,

that I would be working
with Cartier-Bresson

on a daily basis editing his
contact prints and so on.

- He always said
that thanks to John

his big reportage that he
did in the Soviet Union,

John just was fantastic
they way he sold it to Life

and to Match and
to Stren, I think,

all the players at the time

and he always admired
John's capacity for,

his business capacity apart
from his artistic capacity

of seeing what is
a good photograph.

- In 1953, I shot a picture
which made me well known,

Eiffel Tower...

and John Morris
was the one who saw

this picture on the contact.

I was very lucky to be
able to go to the top

by walking on the Eiffel Tower,

taking pictures,

but it's a sign of the times.

I had only one film with me

because it was
difficult to get film.

I had little money.

I made only one shot
of the good picture.

The next shot was
something else.

You shoot much better
when you think.

When you take, "boom,
boom, boom, boom, boom."

No good.

"Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom."

In photography, it
depend on the eye.

All photographers
know this approach

that you talk about
somebody and you say,

"Yes, a good eye.

"He has an eye."

I learned it from
Cartier-Bresson 60 years ago.

The billions and
billions of people

who shoot with a camera,
throwaway camera or anything,

most of them have no eye.

They know how to press a button.

Then they click.

- You never can say,

neither before,
neither after shooting

whether it's good or not.

You know it after 20
years or 10 years.

- I had been away for 14 months

and I was really homesick.

I had a bad case.

I had a baby, my son John,
was almost a year old

and I had never seen him.

I wrote a letter to my boss,
Wilson Hicks in New York,

saying "Wilson, I
want to come home."

Hicks agreed that I should come
to New York before Christmas

and then to my great surprise,
I was re-classed as 1A

and drafted into the Air
Force the following June.

I was in Shepherd Field, Texas,

just finishing basic training

when the atom bombs
exploded over Japan.

As soon as I had finished basic,

I got orders to report to
Boeing Field in Washington

and went to work
in the Pentagon.

The outfit I was assigned to

was an Air Force Intelligence
Magazine called Impact

and it was my job to
put the pictures in

and pictures of horrible things
like the ruins of Hiroshima.

But not the human ruins.

That reported boasted
about how cost efficient

the bombing of first of Europe
and then of Japan had been.

In fact, General LeMay
boasted that the atom bomb

was totally unnecessary that
they had already succeeded

in wiping out
Japanese war capacity

by burning one
city after another.

- Although
the end of Japan's aggression

was in sight before
atomic bombing,

it was this terrific force

that finally signed
her death warrant.

- The horrible thing is

that it didn't shock the public.

The public accepted the
atom bombs as necessary.

I feel that the press let
the world down in 1945

by showing the atom bomb as
a beautiful mushroom cloud

instead of showing the atom bomb

for the terrible weapon it was.

Like most of the press,
the western press,

I was a willing propagandist
for victory in World War II.

I have since come to feel that
there is no victory in war

and there hasn't been a
war since World War II

that I could justify.

The adjustment was very
rough after the war.

I went into the job market.

I was offered several
different jobs,

but the job I took
was picture editor

of Ladies Home Journal,

which was then the leading
women's magazine in America,

the magazine that
was selling, I think,

four million copies a month.

It was a totally different
kind of journalism.

The journal, for example, had
done a monthly story called

"How America Lives," choosing
a different American family,

rich or poor, east or west,
to report on each month.

I persuaded my editors
to broaden the scope

by photographing farm
families throughout the world

because I believed in showing

that people are
people the world over.

The headlines were like "This
is the way the world washes,"

"This is the way
the worlds cooks."

In the spring of 1947,
Robert Capa came to town.

Bob told me that he was
hoping to go to Russia

to the Soviet Union
with John Steinbeck,

so I asked for first look at
Capa's pictures upon his return

because I wanted very
badly to have a family

from behind the Iron Curtain,

as Winston Churchill
had dubbed it.

Russia, today, is regarded

as a grave threat to our nation,

to our freedom, to the
peace of the world.

- This was the beginning
of the Cold War,

so I was a little
bit adventurous

to sell the story on the
people of the Soviet Union.

Here, in Russia,

you see the reason
why we are spending

billions of dollars
in defense production.

- So Capa came back, this
was in early September,

and I said, "Let me
see the pictures."

And I started
looking through them

and they were just great
pictures of ordinary life,

but taken with his
warmth for people.

I found one picture of
a Russian peasant woman

which was just right,
that was the only picture

that could possibly
have been a cover.

The advertising people on
the Ladies Home Journal

were so afraid of being
smeared as pacifists

or as peaceniks, if you wish,

that they didn't
promote that issue,

but the public was fascinated

and the issue of the
Ladies Home Journal

sold out almost immediately.

- John represents a
continuum with history

and with a set of
fundamental values

that are very meaningful to
many of the photographers

who are still working today.

Photographs have a
unique ability to create

a kind of human bridge between

people on other
sides of the world,

from different cultures
and different backgrounds

and you relate to each
other as human beings.

I think that's the
fundamental starting point

for resolving conflicts,

is that you are understanding

that there are human
beings just like yourself

who are suffering,
who are the victims

of injustice or aggression

and something has
to be done about it.

- I've always
believed that people

could live together peacefully

if they got to know each other

and the purpose, the
journalistic purpose of people

was to show that
the commonality,

the common problems of that
people face everywhere.

I am an idealist in
this respect, I admit.

It's crazy for me
to be in Paris,

in a little park,

adjacent to the Del Pier Office
that I have known for years,

but it's Magnum, a
new Magnum Gallery

and to think that the outfit

that I saw founded in
a New York apartment

with maybe 10 people drinking

from one magnum of
champagne 62 years ago

has become an
international institution

with photographers from Russia
and Australia and Canada,

England, of course,

and many from France
and Switzerland

and there's a show here
that's just of the new people,

some of whom I scarcely know,

but I think it's wonderful
and it's a miracle

that Magnum has survived
all these years.

Magnum was formed partly

to establish rights
for photographers.

Capa had the idea that a
co-operative of photographers

could represent themselves
and keep all the money.

I knew all the
founders of Magnum.

We shared common goals, we'd
all suffered through war

and depression in varying ways.

But it was in 1952, after
Magnum was five years old,

Capa came to New York and said,

"It's time for you to join us."

So that's how I became the
first and only executive editor

that Magnum has ever had.

Gene Smith was a
remarkable photographer,

whom I first met when we both
worked for Life Magazine.

We had gone different
paths during the war.

He to the Pacific
and I to Europe.

In fact, he was finally
wounded on Okinawa

and was out of business
for about a year.

He was hit both in the
mouth and on the hand.

When Gene Smith resigned
from Life he came to Magnum.

It was the natural
place for him to come

because we shared his ideals.

Gene was passionately anti-war,

more than that, he was
simply pro humanity.

He was one of those
who was determined

that his pictures
would make a difference

and he never stopped
working toward that end.

- Magnum, for me, it's
the place which is closest

to my use of ideals

and closest to when I
first sort of started

this profession, or this life.

I came to it with
a set of values

and in Magnum, it's the
place, it's the community

where I found closeness
to the values.

- Paulo Pellegrine is a
totally new experience

to me in photography.

He takes pictures which at first
made me very uncomfortable.

He didn't pay much
attention to horizons.

I'm pretty much a conventional
in terms of landscape,

at least I think for landscape,
the earth is normally flat.

Paulo sees beyond the
frame of his viewfinder

and he brings a sense of the
outside world into his prints,

which is wonderful,

and he is also a man who deals
in blocks and deep shadows.

He's a new kind of
photojournalist,

whom I'm just getting used to.

- Ultimately, what
really interests me

is to create visual records
of things that man does

and so that helps you put
what you do in perspective.

I don't necessarily
think that my work has

a capacity to
influence or impact

but I do think that
if a revisionist,

a historian comes along
and says 50 years,

concentration camps or
whatever did not exist,

we have those documents,
we have those pictures

of which testify that
and today the same.

Today, I think it is
important to go to there,

even though still the
situation hasn't really changed

but it's still important
to try and go there

despite all the difficulties,

to create those records.

This is one but probably
the main driving force

of what I do.

Behind what...

- I heard the news of
Robert Capa's sudden death

in Indochina the
morning of May 25, 1954.

It's one of those dates
that I can never forget.

It was such a terrible shock.

His mother held me a
little bit responsible,

which was unfair,

but I was the one who had
had to communicate to him

that he could have
a Life assignment

covering the war in Indochina

which he had, to
my shock, accepted

and at the end of
about ten days there

he stepped on a landmine
and died instantly.

- Mr. Morris, how
are you doing, man?

- You don't call me Mr. Morris.

- I can call you John?

- Please.

I don't think I could
work for the Times today,

I wouldn't qualified,
especially those hours.

I have never worked
for an afternoon paper

and I've never had a job
where I had to come in

before 10 o'clock
in the morning.

- That's incredible.

- I mean, one feels
as though you are just

looking right down
on the ambulance.

So you know another building

that gives you the
same perspective?

- Not with this
unrestricted view.

We did a story on
taxi cabs in New York

and they were like go out
to Broadway Street somewhere

and photograph all the taxis
coming down and I was like

"What if I just went
up to the 15th floor?"

So I went up to the 15th floor

and photographed, you know,

50 taxis in the one block span.

- You could do it right now.

- Yeah.

I also went to the roof

when the plane came
down in the Hudson

because you can actually
see where the plane landed.

- Could you see it from here?

- Yep, we shot the picture

that ran in the
paper from the roof.

- Oh my God.

- Yeah, I mean, it's such
a great vista on New York.

Have you seen the
Pulitzer Hall at all?

- Yeah, I sure have.

I knew so many of those guys.

In 1967, to my great surprise,

I was offered the
job of picture editor

of the New York Times,

which I regarded
then and still regard

as the world's most
important single newspaper.

- Meet the
major problem of our time.

The problem of understanding
the world we live in.

- The New York Times was

the world's paper of record and
it was very, very important.

I think it's still
the paper most read

by statesmen around the world.

It was a very
distinguished newspaper

but it was distinguished
for its writers,

not for its photography.

At that time, the Time,
from a picture standpoint,

was a morgue,

so I was put in charge of
that along with Arthur Gelb,

the Metropolitan Editor.

He determined the story content

and I determined
the visual content

and we revolutionized the
look of the New York Times.

- It was a very
extraordinary summer.

I was hired in June of 1969.

The Mets had won
the World Series.

Men had taken off for the moon
and they landed on the moon.

On the same day that the
men landed on the moon,

the night before, Ted
Kennedy went off the bridge

at Chappaquiddick

and then there were riots
as a result of Kent State.

Down in Wall Street
there were some students

protesting what
happened at Kent State

and all these workers up
in the World Trade Center

came down and they
started bashing heads.

There was a huge riot,

but the point is there was
just very dramatic pictures

all summer long.

There was one big
story after another

and John gave me the
opportunity to work

on all of those
stories, you know.

I mean, it really wasn't just
a phrase open door policy.

You could go in to
see him any time

and he would have functions
for the photographers.

He would invite big, big names.

We would have dinner with
Henry Cartier-Bresson

and Gjon Mili from
Life Magazine.

Another time he had
Gene Smith at one table

and across from him was
David Douglas Duncan

and we got to see them argue
and interact with one another

and we were just these
young photographers

just in awe of the people
he was bringing in, legends.

Legendary photographers.

Our heroes, you know,

and there were right there,

having drinks with
them and so on.

It was extraordinary.

They inspired us
really, they really did.

You would do anything for John.

He would ask you to
do the impossible

and you would just go
ahead and try to do it.

- The most
important job that I had

as picture editor of
the New York Times

was to propose
pictures for page one.

What was put on the front
page of the New York Times

at that time influenced the
press of the entire world.

Spring at home

but unmindful of
plot or calendar,

the Vietnam struggle goes on.

A Vietcong ambush a US Marine

rough rider truck
convoy killed--

- As an editor
for the Washington Post

and then of the New York Times,

I was supposed to be neutral
in public toward the war

as I was supposed to
be neutral in politics,

but I was glad when, in 1968,
a picture came over the wire,

a photograph by
Eddie Adams of AP.

- We see them pulling
this guy out of a building

and they were like
taking him by the hand

and they pulled him
out on the street.

All of a sudden, to my left,
somebody came out of nowhere

and I see him go for his pistol

and as soon as he
raised his pistol,

as soon as he brought it
up, I took the picture.

I thought absolutely
nothing of it.

I go back to the AP Office
and I dropped it off.

I said, "I think I got some
guy shooting somebody."

- That picture moved
over the AP wire

about three o'clock
in the afternoon,

well ahead of time to
be put on page one.

I took it to the Preliminary
Page One Conference,

where we had all the editors

to make sure it wouldn't
get lost later on

because it was a
sensational picture.

There was discussion
about whether

it tilted the balance
one way or the other.

I was determined that we
would play it on page one.

I saw it as a photograph
that would shock the public

into an awareness of the
cruelty of the war in Vietnam.

Eddie was very unhappy

about the publication
of that picture,

even though it won
him a Pulitzer Prize.

The victim had been caught
in a very brutal act

and Eddie Adams
tended to sympathize

with the Saigon Police Chief,

whose motives did
not become clear

just from the publication
of that picture

and I gave him great
credit as a journalist

for me being able
to see both sides.

- General Luan,
then he was like a Colonel.

The whole thing is that the
picture destroyed his life

and that's what bothers me
more than anything else.

He never blamed me
for the picture.

He used the cliché that
we hear all the time.

"Eddie, you were doing your
job and I was doing mine."

- Eddie did not like to talk
to me about that picture.

We had been friends.

I had offered him a job
on the New York Times.

The publication of that picture

marked the ending of our
friendship in a funny way.

- I found two American Soldiers
searching for souvenirs

from a dead North
Vietnamese soldier.

He could have only been
18, 19 years of age.

They were very gingerly creeping
closer and closer to him,

fearing booby trap, a booby
trapped body, you see.

And when they finished
what I thought was looting

and kind of marring his
possessions which were few,

I was disgusted
with their actions

and the most damming
thing that, that they did

was to call him a dead gook.

Now it really,
truly was terrible.

This is a man who sacrificed
his life for his country,

whatever the political
motives of Ho Chi Minh,

which would have been many,

this man was an innocent
young man fighting

for nationalist kind
of reunification.

So they went away and I was,

I was hateful of them and
yet I was part of them, see?

I was kitted out as
an American Marine.

I was sharing their food,
sharing their uniform,

sharing their daily lives

and when they went away,

they trampled on
all his possessions.

There were pictures of his
mother, sister, whoever,

some little children,

some little snapshots
of seated children.

I felt this man, he
deserves protecting,

he deserves a voice so I
shoveled all his stuff together

and I photographed it.

That's the only contrived
picture I have taken in a war.

There is no need to
contrive war pictures.

Things happen very fast.

People die in front of you.

People scream in front of you.

People claw at you to help them,

so there is no need to go around

doing the still life
on the battlefield.

I can do that in my
shed in the back,

but that's the only time,
truthfully, I've ever done that

and many people ask me
about the photograph.

I have no shame in
saying, "Yes, I did it.

"I did it for this man.

"He couldn't speak.
I spoke for him."

- I've known Don
McCullin for a long time,

maybe 30 years.

Don saw more and
all it's savagery.

He no longer wants to
cover war for good reason.

He's seen too much.

I think Don covered
11 different wars.

He had covered wars
in Asia and in Africa

and in Lebanon and
in Northern Ireland

and in 1968, during the
Tet offensive in Vietnam,

I was able to publish
a full page of pictures

in the Daily New York
Times by Don McCullin.

On October 15,

the first moratorium
against the war

turned out huge crowds in
cities all across the nation.

Thousands gathered in
Chicago, New York, Boston,

San Francisco and Ann Arbor,

New Haven and many other cities.

- The photography
from the Vietnam War

had a very powerful
effect on my nation

and on me personally.

Our military and
political leaders were
telling us one thing

and photographers were
telling us another

and I believed the photographers

and so did millions
of other people

and I think it fueled
the anti-war movement

and not only documented history,

but helped change the
course of history.

- One of the landmark changes

came when Life Magazine
devoted one issue

to publishing pictures
of every soldier

who had died in
Vietnam that week,

just hundreds of faces.

The publication
of such pictures,

as Eddie Adams,

the picture of by Nick Ut
of a naked girl running away

from a Napalm bomb.

The picture of a girl
bending over the body

of a student who had been
shot by the National Guard

at Kent State University.

These were important in
turning public sentiment

against the war.

- The
student demonstration

was the same as last year,
except now the signs read,

"Nixon" instead of "Johnson."

In June, the President
tried to meet the issue

when he ordered a
partial troop withdrawal.

Four thousand Londoner's
defying British support

for US action in Vietnam.

Paris students protest
US policies in Vietnam.

- There are six
cities in my life.

I grew up in Chicago
and I love Chicago.

I have worked in New
York more than anywhere

and a bit in Washington and LA

and London,

but Paris is my town.

In 1983, I had
gotten an assignment

to be the Paris Correspondent
for National Geographic.

We found a wonderful apartment

on top of one of these buildings

on Quai De Bourbon looking out.

So this is my first
residential view of Paris.

I still love it.

I have been married three times

and I have been a
widower three times.

A lot of men have been
married three times,

but not too many have
been a widower three times

and I had about 20 good
years with each of the three.

I know so many widows
who just don't have

the courage to fall in love.

They just feel that out of
respect to their loved ones,

they have to you know live
alone and live lonely lives

and I have been through
that three times

and Pat has only really
lost one husband,

but she was with
him for sixty years,

but it took her a
long time to realize

that, she too, could live again

and as a result we are living
just wonderful new lives

at now 95 and 86,

so most people just
don't have the courage

to fall in love again.

I retired from the
National Geographic in 1989

and began writing a book

called "Get The Picture"

and when I finished that,

people were interested
in the subject

and somehow I seem
to be even more busy

than I ever was before.

People keep asking me
to recollect the past.

People keep asking me
to teach workshops,

to advise young photographers.

I have been writing
articles for Vanity Affair

and The Frontline Club in London

and I am just having
a ball working still.

- John is over 90 now.

He has had the most
incredible career.

Despite the odds, he has covered
and edited and been there

from before D-day to right now.

He's really so involved,

whether he is actually
professionally involved

in taking photos or
editing right now

or just being involved in,

in the stories of our time

and you can't do that
if you are a cynic

or if you are a pessimist

or if you are tired
or if you are bored

or if you don't have
passion or commitment.

So I think somebody
of his august age

is a great example to all of us.

- Until 11th September, 2001

it was fashionable to say that

the golden age of
photojournalism,

the age in which
I lived was dead.

If that is so, I would
say that photojournalism

is now being re-born in
challenging new forms

around the world.

9/11 was an enormous
challenge to photojournalists.

One actually died
in the building.

His film was found on his body.

Peter Turnley and Jim Nachtwey

managed to get there
that very night

and lived right through it.

- On the morning of 9/11, with
the first images that I saw,

I just had this sense
there was no question,

this is who I am,
this is what I do,

I have to go to New York.

I got to the outskirts
of Manhattan.

I pulled up to a
police barricade

and I had a press
pass from Nato,

from covering the war in Kosovo

and I rolled down the window
and I showed this press pass,

the policeman said, "NATO?"

and called over his
friend and said, "Ralp!"

And Ralph came over and he said,

"This guy's with NATO,
what do we do with him?"

The guy says, "Jesus Christ,
they're here already?

"Well, just let him
through but be careful."

New York City Police
Department declared

a four mile periphery
around Ground Zero,

the largest crime scene in the
history of the United States

and all journalists
have been evacuated.

I was used to being resourceful

from having gotten in and
out of difficult places

around the world
throughout my career.

I got up on the first
floor of a building

adjacent to Ground Zero,

a place where Brookes
Brothers was and is today

and I looked out at this scene.

It was now about
7, 7:30 at night.

I saw all these men and women,
people that all had families,

bills to pay,
their own concerns.

I saw them show up in
the middle of the rubble

and difficulty and danger

and I saw so many people just
arrive to do the right thing

and that blew me away
and it's something that

that sort of sense
of collective decency

has always stayed with me.

- We'll be here as long
as you guys are here.

- If they stay, I could stay.

You gotta see these people,

like there is no such thing
as having one hero anymore.

- While I wouldn't want
to minimize the impact

and the traces that
many of the things

that I and people like
myself that do the work

that we do, see and feel,

I think something that's
not intuitive often

is that in the midst

of war and conflict,
human suffering,

that one often observes the
most incredible gestures

of decency and
honesty and goodness

by individuals

and that stays with
me maybe longer.

- Most
journalists are anti-war.

They damn well should be

because the war is pretty ugly
when you get up close to it

and photographers, more
than writing journalists,

have to get close to it.

- Anthony Lloyd, in his book,

speaks about the incident
that happened at Chechnya

between Peter
Juvenile and myself,

where he is screaming at us
because we are photographing

these people who had just
been hit by a rocket.

He said, "How can you do this?

"How can you just
photograph these people?

"Don't you care?"

Peter and I turned
on him and said,

"Well, frankly speaking, what
the fuck are you doing here?

"If you are not here to cover
this, then you should go home

"because this is
what this is about.

"You are here to document
what's going here.

"That's your job.

"Or you don't come."

It's not that you
are a cold bastard,

it's because you
have made a decision

that you want the world
to see, what for example,

in this case, what the Russians
were doing to these people.

They killed 300,000 people
and got away with it.

- It really drives
me when you see

good people being pushed around.

When you see people becoming
the victims of violence

and then their lives destroyed.

- Quite frankly, I'm ashamed
of all of it, really.

I mean, all of the things
I have seen in my life,

all the blood, all
the burnt children.

I am absolutely
disgusted with the whole,

the whole business.

- War is inexcusable.

We're just children in the
history of civilization

if we can't grow up
and stop conflict.