Overexposed
Of the many unpleasant places U.S. News sends me to take pictures--Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan--there is one destination I fear above the others. It is a Georgian mansion in the heart of Washington, D.C. The house might not be haunted, but beyond its iron gates lie horrors just the same. Photographically speaking, it is a creative black hole: the uniform lighting, the limited mobility, the lack of access. My fellow photographers and I speak of assignments at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue the way career criminals speak of doing time. "The big house," we call it.
Most of our time covering the White House is spent sitting idly around the briefing room of the West Wing. This is the blue-curtained place made famous by the press secretary's daily briefings, as well as by sci-fi flicks in which the president vows to fight the latest invasion. Hollywood's portrayal is trumpery, of course, that of a large room ignited by ancient, oversize Metz flashes. When I first entered the real thing 10 years ago, still an intern, I felt the sinking realization that the B-movie version was more appealing.
Reality bites. The briefing room is small, dark, and unkempt. Newspapers are scattered over the folding seats, as are plastic cups and wrappers, and soundmen snoring with their feet up. It looks like an adult movie theater after the lights come on. The walls are lined with cameras, as well as stacks of stepladders used to gain a bit of height at East Room events. Television crews are crammed in the rear of the room, the legs of their tripods forming a shiny, silver weave.
Press events at the White House are scheduled with little routine: Some days there are five events; others, none. When a pool call comes over the intercom ("First and only call for photographers covering the Oval Office event"), all the shooters gather at the briefing room doors for an escort. Pushing to the front of the line are the three, self-proclaimed "wire dogs," AP, Reuters, and AFP, who are allowed first entry since their pictures have the widest audience. Unfortunately for the rest of us, these photographers also have the widest girth: Their photo vests bulge with enough accouterments to fill a strip-mall MotoPhoto. For this, the wire photographers receive good-natured guff from the magazine shooters ("Are you going on a five-second photo op or a five-week commando mission?"). We, by carrying too little gear, often err on the opposite side of the spectrum.
Appearances aside, the wire dogs are fast--and thus better suited than I to this hit-and-run environment. Some Oval Office events last 10 seconds. Ten seconds! That gives you five seconds to hustle through its famous doors, three seconds to frame your picture, and two seconds to hold down the shutter. And all the while a dozen other photographers are jostling for your spot, the space no bigger than a closet. I'm often just figuring out the exposure as the event is declared over and the wires are drifting back outside, reviewing their work. Then again, who needs a picture of President Bush locked in a staged handshake with the prime minister of Burkina Faso?
Unlike the wires, which provide resolute coverage of every White House event, magazine photographers can dismiss the intentions of these photo ops and focus on the president himself, to make an image that reflects on the larger White House story. We are out to offer perspective, to characterize a president's ups or downs, successes or failures. So, while other photographers are competing for the cleanest view of the president with this year's spelling bee champs, the magazine photographers are often looking for a different angle entirely, the spot where all these extraneous persons are rendered invisible.
On the frequent occasion of a presidential event elsewhere in Washington, the press pool is hastily escorted to two vans parked near the end of the presidential motorcade. The photographers claim the front rows, since we need to jump out first should the president emerge to shake a few hands or meet with a more dramatic turn of events. The last to arrive in the motorcade is the president himself, a distant blur ducking into a limousine. And then we're off, tearing through the city streets, paying no mind to such nuisances as road signs, stoplights, and rush-hour motorists.
Upon arrival, van doors burst open, and journalists leap out; photographers, scribblers, videographers, soundpeople--everyone is amped, running, and near panic: "Pool! This way!" We are a horrible, panting, sweating stampede--the personification of everyone's worst impression of the media, bumping into stanchions and abandoning colleagues who couldn't keep up. And for what? So we don't miss the first 10 seconds of another podium picture.
They are all the same, these "in-town" events--held in the banquet halls of the Washington Hilton or the Omni Shoreham--the settings supremely dull, the curtains deep red or presidential blue, the tungsten-lit stage with a single lectern, with us squatting between audience and stage, pointing our 80-200s straight up the president's nostrils, then crawling across the carpet on hands and knees looking for a better angle. A shot through the water glasses, perhaps? Maybe a silhouette of Bush in a spotlight? It rarely works. These sites are so devoid of visual potential that if the entire lot of us were magically replaced with the most gifted artists ever to peer through a viewfinder--Capa, Smith, Cartier-Bresson--they, too, would make nary a frame.
Globe-trotting. If photographing the president in Washington is stale, controlled, and crowded, photographing him on the road is a world of opportunity. Usually only six shooters travel, the three wires and three magazines. There is more room to move, the settings are far less predictable, and there is often at least one event where the light is just right, where the president is relaxed and acting off the cuff, and you have the time and space to make an actual photograph. That is, when you're not driving, helicoptering, or flying on Air Force One from one place to the next.
"That must be so fascinating," is the usual cocktail observation about flying aboard the president's plane. After 10 years of this task, I consider it my journalistic duty, if not my patriotic one, to offer a more accurate perspective. There is no retina scan to board, no escape pod to play in, no view of the front of the plane or of the big man himself emerging from his study to invite you in for a beer or a game of cards. Only once have I made it to the front of the plane, and it was well before the president boarded, on a quick courtesy tour with a steward. "This is where the president sleeps," the steward said. Pushing open the bathroom door, he continued, "And this is where he does his thinking."
During Clinton's presidency, we would fly to as many as four states in a day. And traveling abroad with him was a protracted experiment in sleep deprivation. We worked all day and traveled most of the night, checking into our hotels in the wee hours of the morning, then checking out a few hours later to do it all again. Upon awaking in Florence one morning, I stared out my hotel window wondering why this most lovely city appeared so dismal. Rusting white Ladas jammed the streets; pedestrians appeared dour and poorly dressed. The reason, I learned upon snatching a book of matches off the dresser, was that I was not in Italy but Bulgaria.
And yet these grand tours are the saving grace of White House duty. Through the blur of airports and crowds and foreign countries I can see the career I always wanted. Better photo ops, sure. Though for me, as with so many photojournalists, it's about the going--the helicopter ride over the Holy Land, the visit to The Hague, the Kremlin, the Bundestag, the river cruise with President Bush through St. Petersburg, the facades still sunlit near midnight.
And there was that time in Rabat, Morocco, when President Clinton marched in a funeral procession for King Hassan. Mourners were everywhere, hanging from street signs, standing on lampposts, and leaning out windows, wailing as if someone had murdered their children. It was utter chaos, and the president seemed vulnerable. The Secret Service agents shed their robotic expressions for ones approaching panic, their arms pushing violently at everything that moved, including me. And all the while President Clinton pressed on, just the top of his white head visible, bobbing up and down like a Q-tip. It was a finer memory than picture, this spectacle--and that was just fine with me.
This story appears in the December 13, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.