Letter from the Editor
Columbia’s president, Dr. Warrick Carter, and his wife Laurel recently hosted a reception at their home to honor the students who designed this year’s Columbia College holiday cards (congratulations, Jodi Adams and Janelle Olson!). An event photographer had been enlisted to document the affair, but a last-minute fender bender kept her away. Still, as Dr. Carter presented the students with their awards, a photographer snapped the obligatory “grip-n-grin” images that mark such moments, as the students and their president turned to smile at the camera, hands clasped. The photographer who saved the day was awardee Jodi Adams’s professor, who had stopped by to congratulate her. “See?” he said. “This is why I always keep my camera with me.”
That professor is John H. White: Pulitzer Prize winner, friend of Jesse Jackson and Nelson Mandela, mentor to hundreds—maybe thousands—of photojournalists. White has photographed history being made all over the world: the first trip John Paul II made to Mexico as Pope, Nelson Mandela’s release from prison, Elvis Presley’s funeral, the administrations of at least six U.S. presidents, Three Mile Island—as well as smaller moments, such as the births of New Year’s babies, the Chicago River being dyed green for St. Patrick’s Day, and the recognition of Columbia’s holiday-card-competition winners.
Although White has taught at Columbia since 1978, I first met him last spring, when he joined several alumni at Columbia’s Manifest alumni reunion to talk about their work as photojournalists. His passion for his work struck me, and the seed for this issue’s “Portfolio” section—a 12-page collection of magnificent images chosen by the photographers who took them—was planted. “The photojournalist sees through the eyes of the heart, the soul, and shares that,” White told me. “To be a photojournalist is to be there on the hardest day, the coldest day, for the joys, the sorrows, the pain—whatever life entails… it’s the tool to help people see their life.”
White’s generosity—toward his students, his audience, and the subjects of his photographs—is palpable, whether talking with the man himself or looking at his pictures. It’s a quality that he instills in his students, so many of whom credit him with not only teaching them how to take pictures, but how to approach life, and how to share it with others through their photographs. “Maybe one of the reasons life gives me so much to see,” said White, “is because I will share that.”
He continued, “There are three things I want every student to leave my classroom knowing: I want them to have inspiration, encouragement, and fresh hope. And I always tell them to keep in flight. Because once you get out there on your own, you’re in flight. You have the ingredients inside so that you can walk away and know that you’ve done it, and you know you can do it, and you know you have a role and responsibility. You can fly.”Regards,
Ann Wiens / Editor
DEMO magazine
Columbia College Chicago,
600 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 400,
Chicago, IL 60605
Email: demo@colum.edu
