street roots
Jan. 18, 2013
SWEET, from page 8
overcast. All of a sudden, the sky parted.
The clouds disappeared, and it went into
totality. I grabbed my camera out of the
trunk, set it up, watched it and took
pictures. The repairman took pictures. Soon
after the totality, fogged up again: You
couldn’t see it again. It was luck, totally
luck.
R.R.: So the 1980s. Now on May 18, 19 8 0 ,1
lived in Silver Spring, Md., and I was in
junior high. I remember hearing about M ount
St. Helen’s erupting, and I told myself that I
always wanted to see that area o f the world.
What was it like to see it?
B.S.: I was there every day for two weeks
prior to the eruption. I was staying in a
motel at the base of the mountain. I would
set up positions and shoot pictures daily of
the steam eruptions. My wife and I had
plans to go to Paris, and it got to a point
where I had to leave the mountain because
we were gonna go on a trip. And I left. That
first day we were in Paris, we’re watching
TV and there’s this video of Mount St.
Helen’s blowing up. And I wasn’t there.
After all the preliminary stuff and planning,
I wasn’t there. When I got back, about a
week later, every location where I had set
up to take pictures was totally destroyed,
every one of them. Not one existed. So my
going to Paris with my wife saved my life.
I’m a lucky person. I did the riots in
Watts (in August 1965, after a white
California Highway Patrol officer pulled over
and arrested a black motorist). I did the
riots in South Central (in April 1992, linked
to the acquittal of four white Los Angeles
police officers in the videotaped beating of
black motorist Rodney King). And we would
drive in pairs in L.A. wearing bulletproof
vests in rental cars, rolling down the
windows. One guy would drive; one guy
would take pictures out of his passenger
window. That’s how we covered these
things. A news photojournalist is not a safe
profession.
would get phone calls from The Seattle
Times and the P.I. after they’ve seen the
pictures and say, “Did we miss a press
conference?” Gates did not want his main
exposure to be The Seattle Times and PI.
He wanted it to be in The New York Times,
The Washington Post and LA Times. He
liked me and trusted me. As he got bigger,
the access disappeared.
R.R.: You’ve got a photo here o f this plane
on a wire.
B.S.: I always had police radios in my
office, so I could monitor the Seattle Police
Department, Fire Department. And I heard
about a plane crash at Boeing Field. I
immediately got in my car, and when I got
there this is what I saw. The pilot was still
in the plane. Eventually they put a fire
engine and one of the big ladders up there
and took him off. He just said he made a
mistake in his navigation. Like I say, another
day at the office.
R.R.: I don’t know if people thought it was
so wonderful during WTO, however.
It was just another riot scene. The
demonstrators obviously wanted to be
photographed: They wanted their story to
be out. The police at that time were very
cautious because they were worried about
their image. They put up with the media, so
we could pretty much go anywhere we
wanted. There are a few [protestors], they
were just out to cause trouble and break
windows. The police loaded people in vans
and did all that right in front of you.
R.R.: Here we are, in the 2000s.
B.S.: Another anti-war era. This was in
the Tacoma Dome (indicates photo of
woman kissing man in fatigues). This was
the largest group of reservists from
Washington that were activated and sent to
Iraq. This was their departure ceremony. I
didn’t want to get in their face. I was up in
the stands with a long lens, and I didn’t
interfere with anything that was going on.
But it made a really emotional picture. They
probably never even knew this was done
until somebody saw it in the newspaper.
R.R.: I f you could take a picture in Seattle
now, what would it be?
B.S.: Whatever I run into. I took pictures
yesterday of Ste. Michelle, the winery. My
wife and I took a camera, went out there
and spent two, two-and-a-half hours in the
Woodinville area taking pictures. I do that
everywhere I go.
Last time I was in London, we stayed in
an apartment, and my wife tells me there’s a
castle down the road: Kensington Palace.
Took my camera, went down there. I have
pictures of the grand halls, the bedrooms;
they had things from Lady Di all over the
place. It was wonderful. Came back, just
recently they announce who’s gonna move
there? Prince William and his wife, Kate.
Well, of course that place was secured,
closed off. As it turned out, I had pictures
inside. These pictures went to the different
media sources that I still work with and they
sold them worldwide.
So you take a camera when you go
someplace: You never know what you’re
going to run into.
Reprinted from Real Change Newspaper,
Seattle, Wash.
R.R.: You don’t get emotional at events, but
what about terror?
B.S.: I’m cautious. When I get to a
position that I think is dangerous, I
immediately change from the normal
camera that I have to a camera with a really
long, telephoto lens: Don’t put yourself in
the position where you’re in danger if you
can help it. They wanted to send me to
Vietnam, once as a photographer and once
as a photo editor chief. I refused. I wasn’t
scared of the war: I didn’t want to shoot a
war every day. So they left me here and put
me on riot duty and other stuff.
R.R.: They have riot duty?
B.S.: We would go where the riots were,
yeah. I’d be in Seattle; they’d have a riot in
Los Angeles. Before you knew it I was on an
airplane to Los Angeles. The AP had a
special group of photographers, a younger
group, and they did a lot of traveling. I was
part of that group.
R.R.: A ll right. The 1990s.
B.S.: I probably had more pictures in the
old days of Bill Gates than anybody,
including maybe Microsoft. I met Bill early
on. He had, I think, one building in
Redmond, maybe a couple dozen employees.
I think they called the AP and said, “We re
working on a computer thing, you might
want to come out and meet him.” I went out
and met Bill. Bill and I kind of looked a little
similar at that time. And I took pictures, and
he seemed comfortable with me. Bill always
wanted to be an international figure, not a
Seattle person. So he or his staff
periodically would call and say, “If you re
free, Bill’s meeting someone. Why don t you
pop over?” It would be CEO of Intel or
Comcast or (founder of Dell Computers)
Michael Dell. It would be me, Bill, the other
person, maybe a pr person from Microsoft.
I’d come out and put the pictures on the
wire because he knew it would go around
the world. And that’s what he wanted. I
Above, the Apollo 11 ocean recovery, 1969. Below, police confront protesters at the 1999 World Trade Organization demostrations in Seattle.