Photojournalist - Dick Kraus - Behind the Viewfinder

December 23, 1998

WHO HAS A DIRTY MIND?
by Dick Kraus
Staff Photographer
Newsday

A recent thread by working newspaper photographers was woven across the Internet list run by the National Press Photographers Association, recently. A photographer had written about covering a gymnastic event at a local school and she had what she thought was a really good photo of a young female gymnast in action.

Her editor refused to run the photo, because she felt that it was a little too revealing. Since the NPPA List is a text only source and doesn’t permit attachments of photos, one could only wonder what this photo purported to show.

Someone on the list who had their own web page, offered to display the photo if the photographer who shot it would send it to her. Finally, the offending photograph was available for all to see. And, lo and behold, there was a very nice action photo of a young girl, probably a pre-teen, in a leotard or whatever they call those gymnastic costumes, doing a dismount from a set of parallel bars. Yes, it was true that the young lady was caught in mid air with her legs spread wide. But, there was no hint of any portion of her private anatomy to be seen. This was, after all, a sporting even being held in a public place for all to see. And while the public was able to view this young girl and others in action at the event, why should this slice of time captured on film be considered offensive to public taste?

There was a lot of talk on the list from other photographers with similar stories complaining about over zealous editors acting as arbiters of good taste and killing otherwise good photos. And, of course, this gave me pause to recollect a few instances of similar ilk and also gave me fodder for another journal. And, if you read my journals, you know how I love to take editors to task. It’s great, because I don’t have to listen to their retorts. Chances are, none of them read this web page or for that matter, have even heard of it.

Well, I recall one day, many years ago, when I was asked to do a studio shoot for our bard department. They had a cover story for their section on the gastronomic pleasures of eating raw oysters. The head of the department gave rather explicit instructions on what she wanted to see in the photograph. She wanted a single oyster, on the half shell, nestled in a container of cracked ice and the oyster should be close up and prominent.

I guess that about says it for me. I mean, there isn’t much room to be very creative, with those kind of instructions laid before me. So, with a supply of fresh Blue Point oysters (which are produced locally in the waters of Blue Point, Long Island, I might add) and some buckets of crushed ice, I retired to the studio and proceeded to work. I was using a 4 X 5 studio view camera to make the shot and I utilized the tilts and swings of the lens board and film back to control any distortion. I lit the oyster and its bed of cracked ice with a large soft box and then to get some glistening highlights, I used a weak spot light, off to the side. I filled the 4 X 5 frame with the required image and proceeded to expose several sheets of film. After they were processed, I made an 11 X 14 print from the best one (we were only shooting black and white in those days) and took the print out to the editor in charge of the feature section.

She took the print from my hand and turned beet red and gasped.

“Oh, my God!” she cried. “We can’t use this.”

“Why not,” I demanded.

“I had no idea that it would look so much like female genitalia,” was her response.

The photo never ran. Some other story made the cover and the oyster story ran in the back of the section, without art.

I dunno. I thought it was a good shot. I guess that she was a better judge of oysters and female genitalia than I. But, I thought it was a good shot. I wish that I had a copy of it to add to my story, here. But, maybe it’s just as well. Perhaps it would be considered too risqué by the web police and we might be relegated to the porn side of the web.

There is one more story that I can illustrate and that involved photographing Goldie Hawn in a New York City hotel. She was in town to promote her latest movie. Normally, when I have gotten assignments like that, it is done with a reporter and I have to shoot while he/she is interviewing. And there are always a passel of press agents and flunkies surrounding the star.

However, when I got to Miss Hawn’s suite, she responded to my knock and let me in, in person. There was no one else in attendance. She told me that the reporter had already done his interview and this was just a photo session.

(Oh, be still my heart. To be alone in a swanky NY hotel suite with this lovely goddess.)

To make a long story, just a little less long, I won't go into a lot of detail except to say that Goldie Hawn was a delight to work with. She was friendly and sweet and absolutely the most natural person that I have ever photographed. Rather than have her posing stiffly, I asked her to just be herself and talk to me while I photographed her with various lenses from various vantage points. She seemed most comfortable laying back on a couch with her denim clad legs crossed with one ankle resting on her knee while she twirled her lovely long, blond hair with her fingers. I ran through several rolls of film while we discussed the differences between California and NY. My oldest son had just moved to LA and had complained that he found the natives rather stand-offish compared to New York and Goldie agreed with that assessment, which I found interesting. And so it went, for about an hour, after which I bade the lovely lady good day and I returned to the paper with what I felt was a very productive shoot.

The shot that I described just before, was the one that I felt personified this lovely lady. And I made an 11 X 14 print (again in black and white) and went to the editor in charge of the section (who happened to be the same woman who nixed my oyster shot some years before.)

Dontcha know, she objected to this shot, as well. She felt that it concentrated too much on Miss Hawn’s crotch.

Good grief, lady! She is wearing denim jeans. There is nothing suggestive about it. There are sexier images appearing daily in the Sears lingerie ads. Give me a break!

We fought to the death on this one, and I appealed to a higher power. He liked the shot and it ran on the cover and the first editor asked my department head never to assign me to any more of her assignments. OK. Here’s the shot.

© Newsday

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December 23, 1998

Dick Kraus