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“It’s not about pretty pictures,” says photojournalism professor John H. White. “Photojournalism is the tool to help people see their life.” We asked White and six notable alumni photojournalists to choose some of their own most personality significant images, and to tell us about them in their own words. Their choices exemplify the profession, and show us the beauty, the pain, the joy, and the complexity of our lives in this world.

 

PHIL VELASQUEZ

Phil Velasquez (’75) graduated with a B.A. in Photography. Born in Frankfurt, Germany, he grew up on Chicago’s South Side. From 1977 to 1997 he was a staff photographer at the Chicago Sun-Times, and was chief sports photographer his last three years at the paper. He has been a staff photographer at the Chicago Tribune since December 1997. Velasquez has won numerous awards, including photo prizes in the Baseball Hall of Fame and the NFL Hall of Fame. His photographs have appeared in Life Magazine, Sports Illustrated, ESPN Magazine, Sporting News, Time Magazine, Newsweek, People Magazine, and numerous other periodicals.

July 8, 2003
Chicago skyline.
Photo by Phil Velasquez © Chicago Tribune.
“The Chicago skyline photo was taken from the rooftop of my condo building in the West Loop. My wife Robin saw the storm rolling in over the lake from our windows and alerted me to the eerie light and formation of the clouds. I took several images in a strong wind as the storm blew through the city.”

May 20, 2006
Chicago Cubs versus Chicago White Sox at U.S. Cellular Field.
Photo by Phil Velasquez © Chicago Tribune.
“This is Cubs catcher Michael Barrett punching White Sox catcher A.J. Pierzynski after a collision at home plate during the May 20 game at U.S. Cellular Field. It was a huge moment in the Cubs-Sox series, and it set the tempo for the cross-town rivalry. Pierzynski was safe and celebrated scoring, much to the dislike of Barrett, who let loose with a punch. Weeks later at Wrigley Field, Barrett would seek out Pierzynski and apologize for his loss of composure.”

 

MICHAEL ZAJAKOWSKI

Michael Zajakowski (’82) got his start in photojournalism at Columbia College, in John H. White’s class in 1982. The portfolio he produced there got him a job as a newspaper photographer, which led to a career in photojournalism that has lasted 24 years. Zajakowski has won awards for photography and photo editing, managed a photo staff, been a foreign correspondent, and taught seminars in photojournalism and digital photo technology. Currently he is the picture editor for the Chicago Tribune Magazine.

July, 1998
Dharminder Singh holds his cousin Jagjot aloft at a Sikh temple in Merrillville, Indiana. Photo © Michael Zajakowski.
“While working as the director of photography at The Times in Northwest Indiana, I was asked to participate in a photo-documentary project sponsored by the Northern Indiana Arts Association. My proposal was to document racial diversity in Northwest Indiana. While I was interviewing the imam at a mosque in Merrillville, he asked if I had been to the Sikh temple, which he pointed to out his window across a cornfield. The temple was a split-level frame house. I felt self-conscious making a cold call to this house, asking strangers to let me photograph them—it’s easier to approach people when you work for a newspaper. But after I made an effort at telling them what I was doing and why, the priest, Harpal Singh, invited me in. A few days later as I was photographing part of the family at the temple, Harpal’s nephew was holding little Jagjot in the air by her feet in another part of the room. I jumped over and started shooting in the few seconds before he let her down. Jagjot was so captivating, so full of life, that sometimes when I look at this photo it seems that he is holding her down, rather than up.”

 

OZIER MUHAMMAD

Ozier Muhammad (’72) graduated with a B.A. in Photography. He has been a staff photographer with The New York Times since 1992. He was previously a staff photographer at Ebony Magazine, The Charlotte Observer, and Newsday. In 1986 he shared the Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting with Josh Friedman and Dennis Bell for a series of reports titled “Africa, the desperate continent” for Newsday.

March 25, 2003
Headquarters Battalion, First Marine Division, southern Iraq.
Photo by Ozier Muhammad © The New York Times.
“I was embedded with the Headquarters Battalion of the First Marine Division with New York Times reporter John Kifner and four other journalists. The battalion was moving north through southern Iraq, two days after leaving Kuwait. The weather turned nasty with one of the worst sandstorms in recent memory. Needless to say, the Iraqi forces were delighted, and said it was divine providence that hampered the U.S. forces.”

April 22, 2003
Shiite Muslim pilgrims perform the ritual of Tatbir during the first celebration of Ashura in Karbala, Iraq, in 25 years. The celebration was forbidden while Saddam Hussein was in power. Photo by Ozier Muhammad © The New York Times.
“The Ashura holiday brings Shiite Muslims from all parts of the Middle East to Karbala and Najaf, Iraq, to perform rituals celebrating the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the prophet Muhammad. The red blood streaming from the pilgrims’ heads is part of the ritual of Tatbir, in which the striking of the crown of the head with a sword symbolizes the suffering of Imam Hussein and his brother Abbas more than 1,400 years ago. * In 2003 I was in Karbala for The New York Times with reporter Craig Smith. I pushed for this story with the editor of the foreign desk and John Burns, the Baghdad bureau chief. I was raised in the Nation of Islam. Because of my upbringing as a Black Muslim, and then later Sunni Muslim, I was very keen on covering this Shiite pilgrimage, which was totally foreign to my experience as a Muslim.”

 

 

ANTONIO PEREZ

Antonio Perez (’85) graduated with a B.A. in Photography. He has worked as a photojournalist/documentary photographer for more than 16 years, and is a staff photographer with the Chicago Tribune. His photographs have been exhibited at The Art Institute of Chicago, Smithsonian Institution, and the Wright Gallery at UCLA, and have appeared in People Magazine, The New York Times, Chicago magazine, and the Chicago Tribune Magazine.

March 3, 2006
A Show of Strength. A crowd estimated at up to 150,000 people assembles in Federal Plaza in Chicago to support immigration reform. Photo by Antonio Perez © Chicago Tribune.  
“My good friend Vicente telephoned me and asked if I was going to photograph the immigration rally. “It’s going to be huge, with hundreds of thousands of marchers,” he said. I took many photos on street level and on from atop newspaper boxes, but I knew I needed to get up higher to show the sea of marchers.  I was refused entry at two different buildings, but finally, on the third try, someone gave me the okay to photograph from their office window on the thirteenth floor. When I got to the window I knew I had my shot. I leaned out towards the edge of the window, composed, and made the page-one photo. It was a historic moment that photographers live for, to be a witness to historic events and capture the event for the readers. The sights, sounds, and feel for the thousands of Americans of Mexican, European, African, and Asian descent, all coming together for one purpose, was an experience I won't forget.”

1992
Eyes of the Faithful. Joseph Cardinal Bernardin blesses the altar with incense during an outdoor mass in the remote mountain village of Achigca, Mexico. Quechultenango is the Diocese of Chilpancingo, a sister city to the Archdiocese of Chicago.
Photo by Antonio Perez © Chicago Tribune. 
“This photo was taken during a weeklong assignment with Cardinal Bernardin. It was my second assignment out of the country and one of my favorites. The assignment gave me the opportunity to use my religious roots and second language to anticipate the Cardinal's moves and to communicate without an interpreter. Being Catholic, I knew the Cardinal would bless the alter with incense at a certain point in the mass, so I positioned myself in a house slightly above it. I knew this would be the main photo when he turned toward the front of the alter and faced the camera along with the faces of hundreds of women, children, and men.  A sea of faces, watching a tradition, a ritual, a faith that has lasted unchanged for years.”

 

 

MISTY KEASLER

Misty Keasler (’01) studied photography at Columbia and graduated with a B.A. She contributes to Harpers, The New York Times, the London Daily Telegraph Magazine, Time, Dwell, Esquire, and Newsweek, among others. She was awarded the 2003 Lange-Taylor Prize, included in PDN’s 30 Emerging Photographers and the book 25 Under 25 Up and Coming American Photographers. The publication of her first monograph, Love Hotels (Chronicle Books, 2006), will be followed by a show of the same title at the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College in January 2007. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Art, Houston, The Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Art, Japan, and the Dallas Museum of Art. Her first camera was a Polaroid given to her on her seventh birthday.

April, 2004

Smallest Children’s Room, Veritza Orphanage (Veritza, Russia 2004). Photo © Misty Keasler, courtesy of Photographs Do Not Bend Gallery, Dallas, Texas.

 

 

Three Girls, from the “Orphan-Headed Households” series (Busia, Kenya 2006). Photo © Misty Keasler, courtesy of Photographs Do Not Bend Gallery, Dallas, Texas.
“I have been photographing orphanages for more than five years now, and this project has had a greater impact on my life than any other. On my first trip to orphanages in Russia I expected I would make images similar to the ones I had seen before from such institutions: loose, grainy, 35-mm images that elicit sadness. But I was struck by a quiet strength in the children, and I began making portraits of them and their living spaces that I hoped would dignify them. I am attempting to strike a balance between bringing exposure to their tough situations and portraying them in a beautiful and dignified manner. The photographs have taken me to several countries and I have documented orphans in many different circumstances, including traditional government-run orphanages in Russia and children living in orphan-headed households in Kenya, where there is no government infrastructure to care for children orphaned by AIDS. Through this work I have developed a heart for orphans and am haunted by the sweet experiences I have had with them. It is my dream to one day have a house filled with adopted orphans.”

 

PABLO MARTINEZ MONSIVAIS

Pablo Martinez Monsivais (’94) graduated with a B.A. in Photography. He is the son of a migrant laborer and the first of his siblings to be born in the United States. He grew up in Chicago's Mexican-American community of Little Village. After graduation, he began his career as a summer intern for the Chicago Sun-Times and was then hired as a staff photographer. Since the fall of 1998, Martinez Monsivais has been a staff photographer for the Associated Press's Washington Bureau. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for the team coverage of the impeachment during the Clinton Administration in 1999, and has also received awards from World Press Photo, WHNPA, and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

May 7, 2002
Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice in the Oval Office.
Photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais © AP.
“U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell receives a pat on the cheek from National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, in a rare off-guard moment in the Oval Office of the White House. They were attending face-to-face talks between President Bush and the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The meeting lasted more than an hour, but failed to bridge differences on major Middle East Issues.”

October 27, 2004
Marine One helicopter, Saginaw, Michigan.
Photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais © AP.
“Marine One helicopter, with President Bush aboard, blows around the autumn leaves as it makes its landing. As a member of the White House Travel Pool, which means covering each and every arrival and departure, you never know what might happen. You prepare for the worst and hope for the best. This was the latter of the two. The President was on the re-election campaign trail and my day started in Michigan, and would not end until Election Day almost a week later.”
 

 

JOHN H. WHITE

John H. White has been teaching photojournalism at Columbia since 1978, but his students will tell you he teaches as much about philosophy as he does about photography. White began his career at the Chicago Daily News in 1969, and has been a staff photographer at the Chicago Sun-Times since 1978. He won a Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography in 1982, the first (and only) time the prize was awarded for a body of "consistently excellent work on a variety of subjects," rather than a single photograph. He bought his first camera “for 50 cents and ten bubble-gum wrappers” when he was a 13-year-old in Kannapolis, North Carolina, and has since won more than 300 awards for his work. His “Portrait of Black Chicago” series, an essay on the daily lives of African Americans, is part of the National Archives, and he has published two books on the life of Joseph Cardinal Bernardin.

September 5, 1981
Baptism, Chicago lakefront.
Photo © John H. White / Chicago Sun-Times.
“I like to think there are two types of assignments: the Sun-Times assignments that you have to do every week—no excuses, you gotta have ‘em— and the assignments that you get from life. This picture was one of those. I was at home, sleeping. I thought I heard some singing, and I thought maybe I left the radio on, so I got up to turn the radio off and nope, no radio on, but I knew I heard singing. And then my radar just said, maybe it’s singing from the lake, I know I heard it. I went to the lakefront and I got there while they were baptizing. * “This reflects the spirit of worship in the church, but it also reflects a culture of people, a racial identity, and a pureness. For me, and for the readers of the papers, it was a glimpse of a moment that’s from the heart – instead of someone shooting or the new taxes. It’s like playing a song; everybody’s got a song. It’s not always the picture. It’s sometimes just being there.”

February 13, 1990
Nelson Mandela in his kitchen in Soweto, South Africa, two days after being released after 27 years in prison.
Photo © John H. White / Chicago Sun-Times.
“I went with Reverend Jesse Jackson to South Africa. We were going to go and try to free Mandela. The Saturday before he was released, we were at a rally trying to free him. At the end the South African cops, with guns and dogs, started to surround us and started shooting people. And I saw them shoot … and I started taking pictures, and they pulled a gun on me to shoot me. But the next morning, Mandela was released from prison, and here I was, out of all the places in the universe that I could be, I was there when Mandela was released. * “That Tuesday Mandela went to his home in Soweto for the first time. I went in the house, and I was the only photographer in there. Mandela came in the kitchen to get his coat to go out and greet the world—he was just smiling and putting on his jacket. And that was the moment this photo was taken. This was Mandela in his house for the first time, and that moment was precious to me, and precious to the world, and precious to him. And I could share it with the world – a moment in history.”