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The assignment:
Shoot a photo story, with cover, for the Florida magazine on a famous
novelist who was born in Eatonville, a small town just north of Orlando.
And by the way; the subject - Zora Neal Hurston - has been dead for
almost 40 years.
For most newspaper assignments our subjects are living, breathing
people. Occasionally, we are faced with the difficult assignment of people
who are about to die. But rarely do we have to document historical figures
in photos who have been gone for decades.
This formula is used more often by magazines. National Geographic
regularly publishes features I call "dead guy bios" where a
photographer travels the world to make photos that show the kinds of people
and places the famous person experienced. I’ve always admired the creativity
these photographers show and remember recent pieces on William Faulkner,
Vincent van Gogh and T.E. "Lawrence of Arabia" Lawrence.
| For my assignment, I was making photos
for a story that would run the weekend before the 10th annual Hurston
Festival in Eatonville. I had read some of Hurston’s work and knew
her importance. She is known as a writer, a folklorist and an inspiration
to an entire generation of African American women writers, including
Alice Walker. |
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If I were working for National Geographic, I would have several
months, a large travel budget and no other assignments while working on
this story. My job is with a daily newspaper, however, and I had to squeeze
in my photos between assignments and plan carefully.
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Some photos were easy. I went to Eatonville’s
small grocery, knowing that a town store was central to many of Hurston’s
stories. I went late in the afternoon when the sun was at a good angle
in the sky. School was also out so I was lucky to find two teenaged
girls in front of the store. Many of Hurston’s characters were young
black women and the photo worked in showing a modern-day version of
a Hurston character. |
| Finding Hurston’s grave site was a little more work.
When she died in 1960, Zora was working as a maid in Fort Pierce,
a town about 120 miles from Orlando. The legend is that she was penniless
and was buried in a pauper’s grave. Like many of the details of her
life, including her real birth date, this story has been challenged.
But Alice Walker did buy a tombstone for the previously unmarked grave.
Nancy Pate, our book critic and the writer for this story, and I had
to ask several people at the Ft.Pierce funeral home before someone
knew where the tiny graveyard was. A weathered photo of Hurston on
the granite tombstone gave me the photo for the magazine’s opening
spread. |
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The last photo shot was the cover. I know I wanted to photograph
an African American woman under a tree, another Hurston symbol.
The perfect spot was on the shore of a small lake where Hurston
once had a house. After a handful of phone calls, I found Louise
Franklin, a volunteer at the Hurston Museum in Eatonville. She wore
a hat, another Zora obsession, and held an open book. She became
Zora in the photo
.This kind of work dances a line between traditional documentary
photography and illustrations. Some newspaper photographers are
bothered by the amount of previsualizing required to make these
kinds of photos. Others scoff at the use of intense colors as sensationlist
(black and white is the only medium for "the truth" they
say)
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But National Geographic has always worked this way and when the
opportunity arrives, I like to work this way also - even on my restricted
budget. I may never see my photos framed by the famous yellow border,
but I enjoy photographing this kind of subject - dead or alive.
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