Street roots
Jan. 18, 2013
Sweet Shots
Associated Press photographer Barry Sweet
chronicles four decades of contemporary American
scenes from the Pacific Northwest and beyond
Above, Richard Nixon campaigns in Oregon
in 1968. A t left, a woman smiles and
applauds as soldiers return home to Seattle
from the Vietnam War, P H 1969.
J
O T O S BY BA RRY SW EET
These are all tornado pictures, victims of
the tornadoes. One of the things I love to do
is to take pictures of emotions. This
particular picture, a woman took to the
storm cellars when the storm was coming.
She left her wedding ring on her dresser.
She’s trying to find her ring, and she can’t.
It’s just the emotions: This is what I love,
this is Barry.
R.R.: What is it that gets to you?
B.S.: I think people are more important
than things. I look at you, and I see your
face, and I see your emotions. That’s the
way I photograph people. It’s not so much
an event as who is the person at the event.
R.R.: So let’s head into the 1970s. Ahh.
Here’s a picture, this funeral o f Jim i Hendrix.
B.S.: It was just a normal day at the
BY ROSETTE ROYALE
C O N T R IB U T IN G W R IT E R
ur concept of contemporary history
is forever married to the storytelling
powers of photography. Consider the
Apollo 11 splashdown.
On July 21, 1969, Neil Armstrong became
the first person to walk on the moon, gliding
out from lunar-landing module Apollo 11
onto the Sea of Tranquility. Three days later,
Apollo 11, containing Armstrong, Edwin
“Buzz” Aldrin Jr. and Michal Collins,
splashed down in the Pacific Ocean. One
black-and-white photo from the event reveals
a white plume of ocean water as the
spacecraft, with three open parachutes
above it, strikes the Pacific. A color shot
shows three astronauts in gray spacesuits
sitting in an orange life raft awaiting
helicopter pick-up. In another, a Navy
helicopter motors off.
Great photos, but they weren’t easy to
take, according to photographer Barry
Sweet.
An Associated Press photographer at the
time, Sweet was on a Navy aircraft carrier.
Usually, Sweet would take photos and send
the images back to AP over an FM signal.
That’s how he transmitted the wire photo.
But being in the Pacific placed him below
the equator in the Southern Hemisphere,
which meant any signal sent from the ship
would head off into space and never come
back to Earth. What to do?
Sweet realized there was a TV on board.
Navy personnel told him it worked via
satellite. Then it struck him: bounce the
image off a satellite to send back to Earth.
So the earliest pictures of the Apollo 11
splashdown traveled from ship to satellite to
San Francisco to the front page of
newspapers. Sweet said it was the first time
AP employed a satellite to send images.
Based in Seattle, Sweet worked for AP for
more than 30 years. During that time he
captured soldiers returning from the
Vietnam War, Jimi Hendrix’s funeral, the
aftermath of the eruption of Mount St.
O
Helens, the construction of the Tacoma
Dome and the destruction of the Kingdome.
These pictures and others grace the pages
of “Split Seconds: Four Decades of News
Photography from the Pacific Northwest and
Beyond” (Raleigh Press, $19.95). The book
is a time capsule of local and national
contemporary history.
But books sometimes require book tours,
so Sweet journeyed from his current home
outside Las Vegas to the Northwest. While
he says he’s thrilled the book is out, it
comes with a price: Because nearly every
photo in the book was taken while he
worked for AP, he doesn’t own the rights.
He had to purchase them to run them in a
book he self-produced (Raleigh Press is
named after his wife, Raleigh). Even so,
when he talked about his work while seated
recently in the Panama Hotel, where photos
on the wall depict the era when local
Japanese residents were interned, Sweet
spoke with the tone of a proud father. And
over the course of nearly an hour, we flipped
through the book and discussed history,
photography and just another day at the
office.
R osette Royale: This book covers four
decades. So let’s start in the early ones.
Barry Sweet: The early stuff, basically, is
the anti-Vietnam war movement. I was living
in Madison, Wis., and I was working for a
paper called the Wisconsin State Journal.
The University of Wisconsin was a hotbed
for protesting, and they were really
organizing demonstrations all over the
country. I took pictures of the
demonstrations in Madison, so that’s where
my thing started. If you look at the pictures,
these were hippies. Their haircuts and the
way they look: So normal, but back in those
days they were the radicals.
This particular picture (of the smiling
woman clapping) was taken here in Seattle,
on Fourth Avenue. When the Vietnam War
was slowing down, the first troops came
back to Fort Lewis, McChord (Air Force
Base). They brought them into Seattle and
gave them a welcome home parade. This is
that particular parade, and this is a lady who
was watching troops march down Fourth.
There’s a lot of talk about how Vietnam vets,
people didn’t think much of them when they
came home. Not true in Seattle. The first
vets who came back got a ceremony. I
believe the rest of the vets in the other
parts of the country, they were treated as:
“Why were you doing this? Don’t you have
any brains?” But here in Seattle they gave
them respect.
R.R.: Why?
B.S.: I really couldn’t tell you. But there
were people lined up two and three deep. It
was amazing.
There’s also another story: Everything
(for AP publication) went through a picture
editor. I looked at (the pictures the editor
selected) and said, “I don’t see the picture
of this lady. Whatever happened to her?”
The editor told me, “Well, I don’t remember
it.” So I dug up the picture and showed it to
him, he says, “Yeah, that’s not bad. We’ll put
it on second cycle.” Back in those days,
most towns had two newspapers, a morning
and an afternoon. Morning would be the
first cycle, p.m. the second. So he was
delaying it for 12 hours. Not more than 20
minutes after we sent that picture, the
phone started ringing like crazy. It was New
York, and they were really upset. They
wanted to know why that picture was a
second cycle instead of first, because they
thought it was amazing. But that picture
almost didn’t even get published.
From Wisconsin I moved to Topeka, Kan.
I worked for a paper called The Capital-
Journal. I photographed Martin Luther King
in 1965. A lot of people I photograph, you
have no idea what they’re going to become,
what their future is. Martin Luther King was
just a preacher who came to Kansas to talk
about (Brown vs.) Board of Education.
office. I knew who Jimi Hendrix was, and I
knew they brought his body back. I
contacted the family, his father. I asked
about the funeral and if I could photograph,
and they said, “Come on out. We’ll make a
space. We’re not going to let you in the
chapel, but you’ll have other access.” And it
was, like I say, another day at the office, but
there was a lot of emotion there. I did a lot
with funerals here in town. I did Bruce Lee,
who’s buried up on Capitol Hill. I did his son
Brandon, who’s also buried up on Capitol
Hill. I did (U.S. Senator Henry) “Scoop”
Jackson, (U.S. Senator) Warren Magnuson.
If there was a funeral, I was probably gonna
go to it.
R.R.: When you’re at a funeral, do you
become emotional?
B.S.: I don’t. My wife doesn’t understand
it. I don’t know, but it doesn’t seem to faze
me. I do get emotional about people sick
that I know or injuries, or somebody
retiring, or a high school or college
graduation. I don’t think it’s because I have
no respect. Maybe I was too busy just taking
pictures. I don’t know if that makes sense.
I’ve seen a lot of disasters, I’ve seen a lot of
people in trouble, I’ve seen a lot of people
die.
(Looking at another photo) It’s the total
eclipse. I shot that outside of Olympia on
Interstate 5.
R.R.: How do you shoot an eclipse? You
can’t look at it, can you?
B.S.: I did research, and they told me that
if I buy this silver thing like aluminum foil
and put it over the lens of my camera, my
eyes would be protected.
I didn’t expect to see it because I was in
Seattle, and I got up in the morning and you
couldn’t see anything: fog. So I figured I’ll
drive south on Interstate 5 . 1 got down near
Olympia and got a flat tire and had to pull
over. A state patrolman came and said he’d
send somebody to get a tow truck. And I’m
sitting on the side of the road, and it’s
See SWEET, page 9