Eddie Adams Workshop Documentary
Eddie Adams and David Alan Harvey in an old documentary about the first Barnstorm.
My mom just retired as a high school teacher this month, after I don’t know…maybe four decades of teaching art and then digital photography. Visiting home I borrowed one of the VHS tapes that she shows her students on occasion, like when they have a substitute and the kids can’t be trusted to pay attention. The video was a 60 minute documentary about the first Eddie Adams Workshop, held in 1988, and it’s an interesting watch if you can find a copy. Not only can you hear some words of wisdom from some of the biggest names in photojournalism – while they still had hair on their heads – you get a fairly accurate reminder of how great people thought denim jackets and mullets were twenty years ago.
Here’s a quote I liked from Peter Howe, then-director of photography at Life Magazine:
It’s like the saying about the army…join today’s photojournalism, travel to exotic lands, meet exciting people…and shoot them. Except that when you shoot them, make sure you shoot them until they come alive. Until we, the readers, the editors, are intrigued or amused or moved by them. Make sure that you make us care about them. It’s the least that you can do.
I took a photo of the television when David Alan Harvey appeared with Eddie Adams, since Meridian’s Jackie Snow met Harvey recently and has since described the experience with some might say excessive amounts of enthusiasm. Not that anyone actually did say excessive…just that some might say…might.
