A Photographer's Newsletter

The Pictures I Never Took

The Pictures I Never Took.

Not every photographer gets to see a movie about his work…at least not while he or she is alive. There are, of course, some exceptions of that rule, and I am one of them. My name is Rowland Scherman, and I am still alive.

The film, Eye on the 60's, shown on a few Art Cinema screens and at a couple of Film Festivals, and also a run on the PBS circuit. The movie is about some photographs I made in the 1960's that have achieved a certain gravitas in the ensuing 50 years since I made them. The film's director/producer, Chris Szwedo, is often on the road pimping his movie. I help him out when I can, but now that I've been to enough screenings, I see my career exposed to the glare of a filmic scrutiny and I start remembering the pictures I missed, the career choices I declined. So, rather than dwell on all that "what if" crap again--making myself miserable in the process--I thought I'd write down the gaffes I remember, to perhaps mollify in my brain those stumbling, forgetful, and stupid oversights which cannot be changed anyway, and in the process, glean a modicum of inner peace by talking about them.

I begin with an event that happened during the last of my trips documenting Peace Corps Volunteers overseas. The year was 1963. We were in the one grand hotel of Lome, the capital of Togo, taking a short break before we were to fly off to Ghana, or Liberia, or wherever our next assignment was. "We" consisted of myself, a cub photographer not yet 26 years old, and Jim Walls, a 40-something wry and very intelligent little guy who used to write for the San Francisco Chronicle and now was helping out the Peace Corps by writing the public information stories that I was illustrating. Jim could handle this assignment with most of his brain tied behind his back, so to pass the time, he invented a personal game, making up fictional character identities for the strangers he met in hotels. The game was funny and harmless, except that there was one guy who crossed our path so often, and asked so many dumb questions that it, and he, wasn't so funny anymore. “He’s a spy,” said Jim, and he wasn’t laughing when he said it.

A day or so later, the mysterious guy, along with the United States’ ambassador to Togo, comes to the hotel lobby and gathers all the Peace Corps Volunteers, including Jim and I, into the lobby for an announcement. They look very grim indeed.

“There’s been a COUP!” they say. “The country is under martial law!”

I looked out the window towards the beach. Sure enough, about 200 feet away, in the front yard of the hotel were some fifteen or twenty black guys in military garb, holding automatic weapons, taking huge slugs of some alcoholic brew. They were stumbling around, aiming their weapons at each other in apparent jest and laughing drunkenly. What should I do?

“WE ARE ORDERED TO STAY PUT!” Said the ambassador, loudly. I am flirting with a pretty Peace Corps Volunteer in the hotel swimming pool. “Stay put?” Fine by me.

A few days later, when the martial law was lifted, hordes of journalists, from Europe and elsewhere, swept into the country. I was mocked by the experienced press guys. ”You were HERE when it happened?” They asked. It was evident to them that I should have done more. And in my reverie comes this nugget: If I knew then what I know now, I would have have slipped out, bull-shitted the drunken troops about my getting “visual photographic proof” or some nonsense about documenting visually the heroes of the revolution and got a picture of the dead Prime Minister Olympio who was lying face down, mortally wounded, in the garden of the President’s Palace, which was only a six iron golf shot away. A picture of that scene would have been syndicated world wide, gathered a small fortune, and perhaps won a Pulitzer Prize for whoever had made it. Anyway, I did not get the picture.

Nor, it should be added, was I cut down at age 25 by automatic rifle fire; but ever since I have wondered whether my decision was the right one. I have thought about this story many times.

When I returned to the states, most people said don't worry about it, there'll be more such opportunities. I thought: You mean, when there's a coup d'etat in a far away country and you are the only photographer IN that country? That might not happen again. Probably not, in fact. This one chalks up to be The Big Miss.

Somewhat less intense, but also heart-breaking, was in New York City, sometime later. Maybe 1966. The Modern Jazz Quartet was my favorite group, no contest, since 1957. I saw they were playing at the Carlyle Bar. The hefty cover charge was real, 35 bucks, but you got a drink for that. So of course I had to go. When I entered I immediately sat in the front row. Why not? It was just the five of us (me and the MJQ) plus a couple of waiters at the Carlyle. I was the only one in the audience! I was perhaps fifteen feet away from the best musicians on the planet. There was only one thing wrong: No camera. I had left my Leica at the hotel a few blocks away.

There have been some milestones of note: A picture I shot became perhaps the biggest photograph ever made--the portrait of LBJ shown at the 1964 Democratic Convention in Atlantic City. It was perhaps 90 feet tall. I was in the Army Reserve at the time. When I saw on the cover of LIFE my giant LBJ portrait in the background, I hurried down to Atlantic City not only to reap the kudos, but to get LBJ's ear, so I could wallpaper my bathroom with it. Alas, I wrecked my VW on the way and never got there.

The best selling issue (December 1972) in Playboy's 65 year history was the one for which I did the cover. I had made the image (of the beautiful model Pam Rawlings with my gum ball machine) in my New York studio in 1969, but Playboy editorial delayed publishing it; and by the time that particular issue came out I had left the magazine and corporate journalism worlds and was herding sheep in Wales.

Sometime in the future maybe I’ll get to some other gaffes. Including:

1) Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock. Standing right in front of him. For some reason I just stood there, amazed. “I can get a snap of Jimi anytime,” I thought. What a regret. I didn’t shoot a single frame!

2) The Playboy Staff Job. They offered, I declined. That story comes later.

3) Mickey Mantle at a ball field in Birmingham. Hardly a story. I loved Mickey but somehow declined simply to get off my ass, and go see him.

I am sure that all photographers, even the greatest photojournalists, have made some pretty poor, some terminally poor career choices. In my opinion, the highest on that list of uncool choices has to be Robert Capa's fatal 1954 return to Viet Nam, to photograph the French fighting there; even though the beautiful Ingrid Bergman was in love with him, and wanted him to stay with her in Hollywood. He chose instead to cover that stupid, endless war.

Those who make it big in photojournalism have to pay their dues. Capa certainly made it big. And paid big.

Robert Capa before the D Day invasion. Photograph by David E Scherman, 1944.