The passing of a giant in Photojournalism: Angus McDougall

I read with sadness this morning that Angus McDougall has passed away. He was known as Mac to his friends and peers, but all us photojournalism students under his authority at the University of Missouri in Columbia back in the '70s and '80s called him "Sir."

The tall, skinny bald-headed guy at right was Mac and the gentleman at left was Cliff Edom, the founding father of the Mizzou School of Photojournalism. Cliff actually penned the very word photojournalism during his newspaper career, which simply means a photographer who can write, vs. a writer who can take photos.

There is a difference. The well-trained photojournalist knows how to take the photos that speak a thousand words, as the saying goes, but also knows how to write the story that fleshes out the photos to give the reader the entire "picture" so to speak.

On the other hand, there is the writer who can take a photo or two to illustrate his story. The actual quality of those photos may or may not be up to photojournalism standards. The editor who has the latter rather than the former is always grateful if the latter's photos are simply good enough to print, never mind the excellence.

I know a bit about that as I worked as a writer, photographer, editor and photojournalist for 30-some years at a various weekly and daily newspapers here in North Carolina. And what skills I had to hone as a photojournalist during those years I learned at the feet of Angus McDougall.

Angus and his wife Betty both passed away earlier this year, but they are leaving a lasting legacy as they funded with an estate gift the Angus and Betty McDougall Center for Photojournalism Studies at the Photojournalism Department of the Missouri School of Journalism.

And I have often reflected over the years since I graduated in 1975 a pearl of wisdom imparted to me one day by Mac as he looked over one of my photo essays and stories in my senior year.

"You know, John, you're a better writer than you are a photographer." That's faint praise when it's coming from your photojournalism instructor because a good photojournalist is supposed to be equally balanced between the two disciplines, writing and photography, as well as conversant in all the other skills of presenting the complete package, layout and design, headline writing, photo processing, editing, et c.

But Mac was right. I thought when I first heard about Cliff Edom and the Missouri School of Photojournalism that I would be going there to become a professional photographer. It was not until I got immersed in the program that I discovered I had writing skill also. And in that two years at Mizzou under Mac's tutelage, I became a writer as well as a photographer, a true photojournalist. As Mac so wisely observed, I have done far more writing than photography in my career, but the joy of doing both and presenting the complete story for the reader is what photojournalism is all about.

I hope to see Mac on the street of gold one day and sit down to talk about what I have done with the skills he taught me those many years ago. God speed Mac. Until we meet again.

Scenes from forgotten war like ghosts from the past

Some long-lost work of one of the pioneers of photojournalism has surfaced, shedding light on one of the long-forgotten wars of the past.

Robert Capa is known as the pioneering war photographer for his work covering the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s, which was essentially a tune-up for Hitler to try out his new weapons and give his troops some experience prior to launching World War II.

The strange thing about the Spanish Civil War is that the Communists were considered by the liberal press -- and Capa and his fellow war photographers -- as the good guys in this confrontation with the Nazis who were trying to take over Spain. There were no good guys in that Nazi-vs.-Communist war, unlike WWII which followed. But then liberals seldom get history right.

The long-lost 35mm film that has surfaced are some 4,300 negatives taken by Robert Capa, Gerda Taro and David Seymour during the Spanish Civil War, groundbreaking work that was long thought to be lost but resurfaced several years ago in Mexico City.

The top photo is by Seymour of a Spanish partisan who proudly wears a Nazi swastika on his beret. Next photo is of Taro, who was Capa's co-worker and sweetheart, who was killed in 1937 when run over by a tank.

You can view a slideshow of some of the images here at the New York Times online. The article about the restoration of the photos in the NYT is here.

And though Capa is widely credited with being the first war photographer, I did some research in Photojournalism school at the University of Missouri at Columbia about a far earlier war photographer than Capa, who really was one of the pioneers of the dangerous art.

His name was Timothy O'Sullivan and many of the photos of the American Civil War which were credited to Matthew Brady were actually taken by O'Sullivan on the battlefields. He worked for Brady and sent his glass-plate negatives to Brady in New York, who etched his name on the plates.

O'Sullivan was the first photographer on the scene at the Battle of Gettysburg, Pa., and his images of the war dead are still haunting today.

O'Sullivan was also the first photographer to travel down the Colorado River as part of a mapping expedition in 1871, where he took many beautiful photos of the American west, including the first of the Grand Canyon. He took the below photo in Black Canyon.