Mode Rare photographie du photographe afro-américain révolutionnaire John H. White

A John White photograph can make time stand still for a moment, but its impact can last a lifetime.

"People need to understand who we are, where we are. Were here for this time, this short time," he said. "We leave. What we leave is forever."

White has not only chronicled history, hes made it.

In 1982, while at the Chicago Sun-Times, White won the Pulitzer Prize for photojournalism. It was the first Pulitzer ever awarded for a collection of photographs.

His work embodied life in Chicago, often focusing on the Black experience. The joy of a baptism at the 31st Street Beach, the terror of a gas explosion at Cabrini-Green, the beauty of young ballet students in a quest for perfection.

"Pictures are my friends," White said. "They speak to me. They have a language of their own and theyre living moments."

Williams: "When you look through that camera lens, what are you looking for?"

White: "I like pictures. I love pictures. But its the connection to the human spirit. The most important thing is humanity."

That humanity is what stand out to Richard Cahan. He was the pictures editor at the Sun-Times from 1983 to 1999 and worked with White all that time.

"He sees things that other people dont see," Cahan said. "He takes a look at a fire scene or a demonstration and he knows exactly where to go and he puts himself in that position and he takes photographs that other people dont take. There are people that go to those assignments and they go I never even saw this, and there John was."

White was born in 1945 in North Carolina, a difficult time and place.

"And to grow up in the South and see the things these eyes saw, that hurts now," he said.

john-white.jpg

John H. White on assignment.

But he always maintained his belief in the good.

Williams: "Where does that world view come from in you?"

White: "My father was a minister who said make a friend a day and my mother never knew a stranger."

Williams: "How were you able to maintain that as a child in the South seeing what you saw?"

White: "Faith. My faith in God. My faith in humanity. My faith in hope, never losing hope. And believing and then knowing I have a responsibility to be an ambassador of love."

White said he learned about love and more from two of his favorite subjects. One was Muhammad Ali.

"He was so smart," White said. "People dont realize what a genius he was."

Williams: "What made Muhammad Ali so great in your mind?"

White: "The humanity. He was more than a boxer. He was a good soul, a good person."

The other was Cardinal Joseph Bernardin.

"His life enriches me now," White said. "It continues to enrich me. The examples I saw and the things he did, the way he lived, the way he suffered, the way he died. Cardinal Bernardin was one of the most influential people in my life."

baptism-in-lake-michigan.jpg

A baptism in Lake Michigan

JOHN H. WHITE

And White hopes to enrich the photographers that will follow him. Hes taught at Chicagos Columbia College for the last 45 years.

He said it keeps him sharp.

"Im the oldest student in the class," White said.

Williams: "Youre still learning."

White: "Without a doubt."

White said hell keep on learning and finding beauty and believing in the good.

"Im the most blessed photographer on earth," he said. "I just want to be Gods picture taker."

It is winter in New Orleans, and my mother is dying. As I sit at her bedside, on the verge of being overcome with grief, I try to distract myself with work. I've been asked to write about the great Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer John H. White: his pictures, his legacy, and his famously unique spirit.

My mother has dementia. She and I are alone, except for her cat curled up asleep at her side. But thinking about John White makes me feel like I have company. In this dark moment, my memories of him, like the images he captured with his camera, feel like a gift.

I remember the night he touched my life. The Eddie Adams Workshop is an institution in the world of photojournalism: four days for professionals and students to meet, learn, and bond. John White, with his perfect Afro framing his ageless face and smiling eyes, has always been involved, or at least in my fading memory he always has been.

I was first invited to the workshop in the 1990s, when images were made on film and digital cameras were slightly smaller than a Smart car. At the time, I was an eager 20-something photo intern at the Los Angeles Times. John White was there, as was Gordon Parks, the legendary black photographer and filmmaker, both in the role of professional instructors. I was one of 100 young photographers hoping to learn from them.

Williams-Ali.jpg

A crowd of 10,000 cheers Elijah Muhammad at his annual Savior's Day Message in Chicago, 1974.

I recall other young photographers of color, but as far as I can remember, I was the only black participant apart from faculty members like White and Parks. Even then, this was becoming a familiar experience. I'd find myself thinking: I must do more. I must be the best.

Sign up for CJRs daily email

Email address

White, of course, came up in an even less diverse era. A preacher's son from Lexington, North Carolina, he was born in 1945, when the idea of a black photojournalist barely existed. A teacher once told him he'd grow up to be a garbage man. As the story goes, White's father told him it was fine to be a garbage man “as long as he was the one driving the truck.” He was taught to work hard and take pride in that work, whatever it was.

There was such violence, fear, and crime, but the exposure of images became a light that only photography could create.”

I'd heard of White before the Eddie Adams workshop. I knew he worked for the Chicago Sun-Times, where he'd won the Pulitzer for feature photography in 1982. I also knew he'd won his Prize for a collection of pictures taken over the course of a year, a rarity among photographers, who are usually honored for a single image or a photo essay or story, which involve a collection of related images. Indeed, John White is the only photojournalist in the last 100 years who has won a Pulitzer in either of the photography categories with a portfolio of one year's work. He is also one of only six black photojournalists who have won individual Prizes.

White's winning portfolio captures his powerful and consistent vision: simple, straightforward images; beautiful use of light; muscular composition; and subversive, meaningful moments. It contains images of daily life in Chicago, from the whimsical—a dinosaur skeleton having its teeth brushed and a penguin frolicking—to a touching and sweet image of two little girls playing a single violin. Young ballerinas leap and float. A National Guard citizen-soldier trains hard. A child plays in a dilapidated hallway at the notorious Cabrini-Green public housing complex.

Williams-fountain.jpg

Girls play in the flow of a fire hydrant in the Woodlawn Community on Chicago's South Side, 1973.

One cold autumn night, on a bus back to the Eddie Adams farm after a trip to town, I spied an empty seat next to White and grabbed it. We quickly fell into a hushed, intimate conversation, and he asked me a question I'll never forget: “Are you a black photographer or a photographer who happens to be black?”

I remember tears welling in my eyes, and hoping that he couldn't tell. Even back then, it was a question I asked myself often, an exercise in the emotional complexity of being black in America. I don't recall what I said, or whether I said anything at all.

White's question reminded me of the “double-consciousness” that W. E. B. Du Bois describes in The Souls of Black Folk. Being black in America, Du Bois writes, means living with a “sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”

When I was an intern at the Times, there was only one black photographer on staff and a few photo editors of color. I sometimes felt that my race was more important than my skills. Shortly after I started there, a white reporter asked me to work with her on a story involving black teenagers in south LA. I gladly agreed and shared some of my ideas, but she told me she wasn't looking for ideas. I want you to come with me because I know you'll be able to calm these kids down, she said, more or less. So I went along and calmed the kids down so that she could talk to them. I made a couple decent frames, but on that story, my dreadlocks and persona were what mattered.

Williams-tall.jpg

Abandoned housing pockmarks Chicago's South Side; buildings are left vacant after fires, vandalism, or owners' failure to provide basic services, 1973.

Is John White a black photographer or a photographer who happens to be black? The answer is complicated. I can only imagine looking at a newspaper today and experiencing as powerful a body of work as White's, with an earnest visual stream of consciousness that is tightly edited and that explores a city and its people through various moods that span what it means to be alive. As then-Sun-Times Executive Vice President and Editor Ralph Otwell wrote in his 1982 letter accompanying White's Pulitzer portfolio, his work was “as big as life itself.”

In one of White's pictures, we travel beneath Chicago and walk the line with a worker in a subway tunnel, in awe at what men and women have created to move us to and fro. His photograph of a preemie struggling to live forces me to stare, silently offer a prayer of thanks, and then smile as I think about my little Papi at day care.

We go to jail and watch a nun minister to a captive flock. I think and feel. Those of us who believe in a higher power sense the presence of God within the picture of a baptism in the churning waters of Lake Michigan. I continue to feel.

This is life. John White reminds us that we are alive.

But there's something else in these pictures, too, something troubling. We take a journey through the gritty, graffiti-covered world of Cabrini-Green. We feel the pressure of poverty; the history of redlining in Chicago is evident, the plight of black folk clear. Though we don't see gangs, we feel their presence. We walk mode the beat with cops, and feel the intensity of their assignment, as well as concern for the young people they arrest. Yet even here, the strength of the spirit cannot be denied. Amid the poverty, there is pride—even joy.

“Photography took the handcuffs off of that place,” White told me recently. “The children could smile again, play again because of the power of journalism. There was such violence, fear, and crime, but the exposure of images became a light that only photography could create.”

One of these photos has become iconic. It captures children smiling and playing in front of a monolithic tower at Cabrini-Green. Though the building looms over him, the boy at the center of the frame is larger than life. His joy is infectious, impossible to ignore. Young black men are often viewed as threats, but this boy is palpably innocent. White chose to celebrate a black child. I believe this was an artistic decision, not a political one, but it carries a deeper social meaning.

Williams-housing.jpg

I imagine White must have felt an added responsibility as a black photographer in Cabrini. Not to right a wrong, but to do right by the people he was photographing, as opposed to just making a good picture. In my own life, it's moments like these when I've felt like a black photographer, rather than a photographer who happens to be black. You look at this world with a historical perspective, and try to give a voice to the voiceless. It's not just an assignment or a job. It's a sacred responsibility.

It hurts to admit that John White's Pulitzer is much larger than the pictures for which he won. It cannot be separated from the social implications of his being black, in a field where concerns about the lack of diversity are as pressing now as ever. Take the city I call home, New Orleans, which is more than 60 percent black, with a growing Latino community and a substantial Asian population. Yet the photo staffs of our mainstream newspapers and wire services do not begin to reflect the community's diversity.

John White didn't dwell on the negative. When the Sun-Times laid him off in 2013, along with the rest of its photo staff, he responded with grace. “I light candles, I don't curse the darkness,” he told The New York Times. “Even now, my colleagues are cursing the darkness. I'm lighting the candles. And I give wings to dreams, I ain't breaking no wings. I'm not clipping any wings. Make a difference in the world. One light. One day. One image.”

My mother died on a Saturday in January. It was automatic to think of White as I mourned her. He is a deeply spiritual man, and something I read recently has taken me deeper into my meditation on his importance in my life.

“I believe in God, who made of one blood all nations that on earth do dwell,” Du Bois wrote in his essay “Credo.” “I believe that all men, black and brown and white, are brothers, varying through time and opportunity, in form and gift and feature, but differing in no essential particular, and alike in soul and the possibility of infinite development.”

Am I a black photographer or a photographer who happens to be black? I can answer White's question now. Within my double-consciousness, I am both.

Williams-sidebar.jpg

In 1997, the Los Angeles Times assigned photographer Clarence Williams to document the lives of children growing up with drug-addicted parents. Williams spent days and nights with addicts and their kids, capturing images of a mother shooting up heroin near her 3-year-old daughter and the son of a speed addict digging through a dumpster for clothes.

Williams-pulitzer.jpg

An image from Williams's Pulitzer-winning series.

One afternoon, Williams was hanging out with a female speed addict. She liked to get high and clean frenetically, “like a crazy person,” Williams recalls. In a drug-induced fugue, she deposited her infant daughter on a blanket on the floor and started vacuuming. Through his camera lens, Williams saw the baby grab for the vacuum cleaner cord and bring it to her mouth. “I had no desire to take a picture of a child electrocuting herself,” he says. He put down his camera and picked up the baby. “I believe there are times when we're in the world and we have a journalist's hat on, and there are times when you have to take the journalist's hat off and put on your human hat. That was a time when I had to put on my human hat.”

While everybody else was stunned and upset that The Chicago Sun-Times had fired its entire photography staff, I couldn't stop thinking of one man. They did that to John White? The Chairman of the Board? That's like the Bulls getting rid of Michael Jordan.

For a hot minute, my South Side Chicago roots took over — I was ready to roll down.

DESCRIPTIONM. Spencer Green/Associated Press John H. White at a June 6 protest in front of The Chicago Sun Times's headquarters.

John was the photographer I looked up to when I was an intern at The Chicago Daily News, where he was working in the early 1970s. My godfather, John Tweedle, told me to look him up. John looked out for me, encouraged me and nudged my career. I watched him on the streets, in the darkroom and even stood by his side as he carefully put together the portfolio that won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1982.

When I visited him, he was not letting the firing change how he felt about himself, or his fellow photographers, one bit.

“A job's not a job because of labor law,” he said. “It's just something you love. It's something you do because it gives you a mission, a life, a purpose, and you do it for the service of others.”

All he had wanted to hear from the executives who let him go was two words that never came: thank you. But even then, he did not respond with anger.

“I light candles, I don't curse the darkness,” he said. “Even now, my colleagues are cursing the darkness. I'm lighting the candles. And I give wings to dreams, I ain't breaking no wings. I'm not clipping any wings. Make a difference in the world. One light. One day. One image.”

John taught me how to fly.

I had been taking pictures since high school, but when I got to The Daily News, I was a copy-girl intern. But I also tried to copy John the minute I saw him walk through the newsroom after an assignment. I would sneak away and go back toward the darkroom — his chapel away from church — and watch him unload his cameras and ask him about his day.

I even tried to walk like he walked. I had seen a lot of photographers on assignment, but to find John White, you had to look in the shadows. He was never where you could see him. He was always where he could be, like he was hovering over in a corner. Like he could see everything in a room. He had this look. He kept his camera low-key. And all of a sudden, he'd pick it up and find the real subject. The one you hadn't seen before.

He didn't do this for prizes, though he won a lot of them. He did it for “consistent excellence.” And for as long as he had been taking pictures, it never got boring or predictable.

“I've got the same set of eyes, nothing's changed,” he said. “Every day, a baby is born. Every day, someone dies. Every single day. And we capture everything in between. You think of this thing called life and how it's preserved. It's preserved through vision, through photographs.”

DESCRIPTIONJohn H. White “Ice House.”

You've probably figured out by now that John thought about bigger things. He was a religious man, born on a Sunday into a family of preachers in North Carolina. When he tells one and all to “keep in flight,” it's as much spiritual advice as it is professional. He takes that advice himself, even after the slight of seeing one of his pictures published in his old paper with only “Sun-Times Library” as the credit line.

“I can't get caught up in those things,” he said. “You got to look at the big picture, because I know the true photo editor.”

Like a good storyteller — or a preacher — he taught with examples from his life, often talking about moments with his father in North Carolina. He remembered one night walking through a wooded patch with his father, who reached out and grabbed a firefly.

“Look at my hand,” his father said as he gently squeezed the insect. “And look what he's doing. He's making a light. He can't contain his light. God gives us light and we can't contain this light. Be like the lightning bug. Don't let anyone contain your light.”

I was still an intern when, despite protests from some of the other staff photographers, I was sent out to cover how children were dealing with a teachers strike. I went out to Cabrini-Green, passed by a dentist's office and saw a boy sitting in the chair. I went in and asked if I could photograph the dentist, and he agreed.

Nothing much was happening.

I thought it was going to be a boring picture. All of a sudden, the dentist yanked a tooth from the kid's mouth. He didn't tell me he was going to do this. The kid's eyes crossed and his mouth was open. The paper ran it with “He'd Rather Be in School” as the caption. That shot helped the other photographers accept me.

“Everybody remembers that picture, a billion-dollar picture,” John said. “People realized then that she's doing what we did, she's spreading her wings and trying to fly, and you know, it's like you were that lightning bug. You didn't let them contain you and keep you down.”

I swear I didn't even know what the Pulitzer was when I watched him assemble the portfolio that would earn him journalism's highest prize. I stood beside him in the darkroom as he printed (with a towel slung over his left shoulder). I watched him put paper, make careful measurements and lay out a story. He showed me how to tell a story.

Years later, John and I both covered Pope John Paul II's Mass in Central Park. I showed off my computer and my new digital camera. I was proud of where he had helped me get. But not as proud as he was.

“It's like your child,” he told me. “And they got a touchdown. You know what I mean? And it wasn't a Hail Mary touchdown, you know what I mean? It was from one end of the line to the other. You know? It required a lot, but you got the touchdown. This is the journey. You go through storms, rain and hurricanes, and forces of evil. You know. But you keepin' the fight.”

John, I was just doing what you taught me: staying in flight and sharing the light.

John White holds a unique place in African-American journalistic history. Not only is he part of the tiny percentage of African Americans who have found employment as photographers in Americas fourth estate—also known as print journalism—he has enjoyed a renowned 40-year career and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize.

While working at the Chicago Daily News in 1973, White got the unique assignment to work for the federal government and, more specifically, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for a program called DOCUMERICA. Modeled after the successful WPA project of the 1930s and 1940s, photographers in DOCUMERICA were to capture scenes of environmental blight (though it eventually opened up to a broader canvas). The result, from photographers all over the country, represents a rich tapestry of American life in the 1970s. According to White, this assignment represented "an opportunity to capture a slice of life, to capture history."

White focused on the African-American community in Chicago, at that time a place steeped in segregation. In his series of photographs, he presents the rich and varied lives on the citys South Side, from the faces of the distressed and dignified to the lives of the deeply religious, from Jesse Jacksons controversial pulpit to hard working brothers trying to make a buck. It is John Whites vision of a city, of a community, and of a place that few outside his community knew well.

John White continues to capture images of the city for the Chicago Sun-Times. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including induction into the Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame.

Sunrise in Chicago, March 1973

At the time, Chicago was considered the black business capital of the United States. There were 8,747 black-owned businesses which grossed more than $332 million. In 2010, there are 64,839 black-owned businesses in the city.

Empty ghetto housing, May 1973

Fires, vandalism, and failure to provide basic tenant services are just some of the reasons that housing was vacated in black areas. Though the housing may have been salvageable, they were replaced with high-rise apartments.

Fruit stand on the South Side, June 1973

Many of the black businesses in Chicago began small and grew by sheer hard work and determination. In 1973, Chicago had 14 of the top 100 black-owned businesses in the country.

Kids play basketball at Stateway Gardens, May 1973

Stateway Gardens was just one of many high-rise housing projects. The complex had eight buildings with more than 1600 apartments housing 6,825 people. It was built in 1955 for $22 million. Gang violence and staggering crime rates led to demolition of the complex, which began in 1996 and was completed in 2006.

Student at Westinghouse Industrial Vocational School, May 1973

According to John White, this woman is “one of the many black faces in this project that portray life in all its seasons. She is a member of her race who is proud of her heritage.”

A black man, June 1973

This man is one of nearly 1.2 million black people who make up more than one-third of Chicago's population. For John White, his photos “are portraits that reflect pride, love, beauty, hope, struggle, joy, hate, frustration, discontent, worship, and faith. In short, portraits of individual human beings who are proud of their heritage.”

Religious Fervor, March 1974

“Religious fervor is mirrored on the face of a Black Muslim woman, one of some 10,000 listening to Elijah Muhammad deliver his annual Savior's Day message in Chicago.” Original caption by John White.

Fruit of Islam, March 1974

Special bodyguards, known as the “Fruit of Islam,” sit at attention, below the stage where Muslim leader Elijah Muhammad delivers his annual Savior's Day message.

Rev. Jesse Jackson, July 1973

The Rev. Jesse Jackson speaks from his pulpit to members of Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity) at its annual convention. One of the goals of PUSH is to propel small black-owned businesses.

Isaac Hayes, October 1973

Soul singer Isaac Hayes playing at the PUSH convention. The annual event showcased black talent in business, entertainment, and the arts in an effort to provide opportunities.

John White holds a unique place in African-American journalistic history. Not only is he part of the tiny percentage of African Americans who have found employment as photographers in Americas fourth estate—also known as print journalism—he has enjoyed a renowned 40-year career and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize.

While working at the Chicago Daily News in 1973, White got the unique assignment to work for the federal government and, more specifically, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for a program called DOCUMERICA. Modeled after the successful WPA project of the 1930s and 1940s, photographers in DOCUMERICA were to capture scenes of environmental blight (though it eventually opened up to a broader canvas). The result, from photographers all over the country, represents a rich tapestry of American life in the 1970s. According to White, this assignment represented "an opportunity to capture a slice of life, to capture history."

White focused on the African-American community in Chicago, at that time a place steeped in segregation. In his series of photographs, he presents the rich and varied lives on the citys South Side, from the faces of the distressed and dignified to the lives of the deeply religious, from Jesse Jacksons controversial pulpit to hard working brothers trying to make a buck. It is John Whites vision of a city, of a community, and of a place that few outside his community knew well.

John White continues to capture images of the city for the Chicago Sun-Times. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including induction into the Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame.

Sunrise in Chicago, March 1973

At the time, Chicago was considered the black business capital of the United States. There were 8,747 black-owned businesses which grossed more than $332 million. In 2010, there are 64,839 black-owned businesses in the city.

Empty ghetto housing, May 1973

Fires, vandalism, and failure to provide basic tenant services are just some of the reasons that housing was vacated in black areas. Though the housing may have been salvageable, they were replaced with high-rise apartments.

Fruit stand on the South Side, June 1973

Many of the black businesses in Chicago began small and grew by sheer hard work and determination. In 1973, Chicago had 14 of the top 100 black-owned businesses in the country.

Kids play basketball at Stateway Gardens, May 1973

Stateway Gardens was just one of many high-rise housing projects. The complex had eight buildings with more than 1600 apartments housing 6,825 people. It was built in 1955 for $22 million. Gang violence and staggering crime rates led to demolition of the complex, which began in 1996 and was completed in 2006.

Student at Westinghouse Industrial Vocational School, May 1973

According to John White, this woman is “one of the many black faces in this project that portray life in all its seasons. She is a member of her race who is proud of her heritage.”

A black man, June 1973

This man is one of nearly 1.2 million black people who make up more than one-third of Chicago's population. For John White, his photos “are portraits that reflect pride, love, beauty, hope, struggle, joy, hate, frustration, discontent, worship, and faith. In short, portraits of individual human beings who are proud of their heritage.”

Religious Fervor, March 1974

“Religious fervor is mirrored on the face of a Black Muslim woman, one of some 10,000 listening to Elijah Muhammad deliver his annual Savior's Day message in Chicago.” Original caption by John White.

Fruit of Islam, March 1974

Special bodyguards, known as the “Fruit of Islam,” sit at attention, below the stage where Muslim leader Elijah Muhammad delivers his annual Savior's Day message.

Rev. Jesse Jackson, July 1973

The Rev. Jesse Jackson speaks from his pulpit to members of Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity) at its annual convention. One of the goals of PUSH is to propel small black-owned businesses.

Isaac Hayes, October 1973

Soul singer Isaac Hayes playing at the PUSH convention. The annual event showcased black talent in business, entertainment, and the arts in an effort to provide opportunities.

ohn H. White bought his first camera for fifty cents and ten bubble gum wrappers. Later, as a staff photographer for the Chicago Sun-Times, White toured the world, often facing danger to capture historical moments. As a teacher at Chicago's Columbia College, he has shared his experience with aspiring photojournal-ists. In nearly thirty years as a photojournalism he has earned over three hundred awards, including the prestigious Pulitzer Prize.

Father Taught Him About Life

Born March 18, 1945, in Lexington, North Carolina, White was the son of an African Methodist Episcopal minister who often moved the family from city to city in order to teach his children life lessons about the world around them. White remembers another kind of lesson when he was in the second grade; his father took him and his brothers out of school so they could “see a great man.” He took them to a railroad station in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where, on the back of a train car, stood President Dwight Eisenhower. Another time, White's father took his children to the site of a fatal car crash to teach them the consequences of violating the laws of man and nature. “He taught us about life, about love and respect for humankind which literally saved my life,” White said in an interview. “I think if I hadn't had that sense of love for people instilled in me from early on, I would have taken a bad road in life.”

AD

A slow student, White cried once when told by a teacher that he'd grow up to be nothing more than a garbage man. His father comforted him by telling him that it was okay to be a garbage man—as long as he was the one driving the truck. White learned that the goal, no matter what one pursues, is to strive to be the best. Although he bought his first camera at the age of 13 for 50 cents and ten bubblegum wrappers, the idea to become a professional photographer didn't occur to White until much later. As a commercial art student at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte, North Carolina, he decided that photography was the “best and simplest means of expression for me ...” and he pursued it passionately.

Although a stint in the Marine Corps gave him the opportunity to work as a photographer, White had a tough time finding work back in civilian life. Employers weren't even talking to blacks then, let alone hiring them, White remembered. But he landed a job at the Chicago Daily News in 1969, and stayed in Chicago. After the Daily News stopped publishing, White moved to the Chicago Sun-Times, in 1978.

Getting the Shot, No Matter What

Not only a full-time photojournalist for a major Chicago daily, White also was a photo teacher and head of the photojournalism department at Chicago's Columbia College. He was known for giving his students a taste of what real life as a photojournalist was like. He regularly

AD

At a Glance…

B orn March 18,1945, in Lexington, NC Education: Associate of Applied Science degree in commercial art and advertising design, Central Piedmont Community College, Charlotte, NC, 1966,

Career: Photographer, Chicago Daily News, 1969-78; Chicago Sun-Times, 1978-; artist in residence, teacher, Columbia College, 1978-; Photojournalism Department of Columbia College, dept head, 1988-. Exhibitions; My People: A Portrait of Afro-American Culture, Rockefeller Center, New York City, 1991; The Soul of Photojournalism, Comenius University, Slovakia, 1993; John H. White: Portrait of Black Chicago, National Archives Exhibit, 1997; Witness to History, 55 Years of Pulitzer Prize Photos, Bunkamura Museum, Tokyo, Japan, 1998.

AD

Member: President, Chicago Press Photographers Association, 1977-78.

Awards: Photographer of the Year, Chicago Press Photographers Association, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1986; Marshall Field Award, from Chicago Sun-Times, 1976; National Headliner Award, 1979, 1990, 1999; World Press Photo Competition, 1979; honorable mention, Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, 1979; Pulitzer Prize Award, feature photography, 1982; Outstanding Photojournafist Award, Chicago Association of Black Journalists, 1981, 1982, 1984; first place, general news, Chicago Press Photographers Assn., 1986; Joseph A. Sprague Memorial Award, National Press Photographers Assm, 1989; National Press Award, 1991; inducted, Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame, 1993; National Press Photographers Assn. Award of Excellence in General News Photography, 1994; Chicago Medal of Merit, 1999; Studs Terkel Award, 1999.

AD

Addresses: Business —Chicago Sun-Times, 401 N. Wabash Ave., Chicago, IL 60611.

put them through what he called a “quick-draw drill.” Two students stand back to back, when White says “Go,” the students walk away from each other, and when he says “Draw,” they spin around and shoot. The goal is not only to get the first shot, but to get it in focus. Photojournalists on the street rarely get a second chance. “You'd better have what it takes to drive through traffic jams or rush hour, past the radar cop, know [shortcuts] that might cut travel time,” he would tell his students, “then get there, set up for the best shot, take it, get back, and print a picture by deadline.” As a photojournalism White had to practice what he taught and follow the action no matter how dangerous, and has admitted to being frightened. He excelled at this, and earned over 300 awards for it, including the prestigious Pulitzer Prize. While in South Africa with the Reverend Jesse Jackson, a gun was held in his face by a police officer who'd just shot some people and was enforcing the law there against documenting police activity.

AD

Capturing the action at just the right moment was what White was good at. On Halloween morning 1998, White was radioed by his editor at Chicago Sun-Times to investigate a suspicious report he heard on the fire radio—some senior citizens were being evacuated from a building because of a ruptured gas main. The area of the incident was blocked off, so White had to take side streets—he later declined to give away his secret route. He arrived, jumped out of the car with two cameras loaded and set for the proper time of day and exposure. Moments later, an explosion shot up the side of the building, and he captured it on film. White called the shot a crisis demanding “everything you know” with no time to think about it. “Somebody made a statement that Sammy Sosa, for instance, can see a baseball at 100 miles an hour,” White told the News Photographer. “You see everything in an instant. You're comprehending things all in an instant. Our lives, our work, our profession is about capturing an instant that's forever. So we see more than just a fireball, more than just a building, more than just a person—you see all those things. I don't know how you do that, but it's done.”

AD

Last Days of a Cardinal

White first met and photographed Joseph Cardinal Bernardin at an airport in 1979, while both were awaiting the arrival of Pope John Paul II. White was struck by the Catholic cardinal's presence, and felt an immediate connection with him, despite their obvious differences. “There I was,” he told the New Catholic Explorer, “a black photojournalism the Protestant son of a Protestant minister, the brother of three Protestant ministers, and I felt Cardinal Bernardina luminous spirit when we met.” White followed Bernardin more closely after Bernardin was named Archbishop of Chicago in 1982, and the two became friends. He photographed Bernardin often for the Chicago Sun-Times over the next 14 years, documenting his initial mass in Chicago's Grant park, his acquittal from charges of sexual misconduct, and his struggle with cancer.

White's first book, a visual diary of Bernardin, was published in 1996. This Man Bernardin proved a critical success for White, and a record-breaking bestseller for its publisher, Loyola Press. White called the photographic memoir “an assignment from God” in the New Catholic Explorer. The follow up, The Final Journey of Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, was published in 1997. In it, White documented the Cardinal's last days struggling with cancer, and those who mourned him after he died. The cardinal invited White into his hospital room after his cancer surgery, telling others, “John is my friend.” White treasured his years covering the cardinal. In the New Catholic Explorer, he called the task “a privilege—a front-row seat to his life, and an opportunity to be exposed to his life and to the people he shepherds.”

AD

White considers his camera his passport to the world. He toured Russia, South Africa, Europe, Mexico, the Middle East, and Asia on assignment. He also was involved in photo conferences all over the world. He was one of the few Vatican-approved photographers to cover Pope John Paul II's 1979 visit to Mexico. White also was one of 200 photographers to participate in the “Day in the Life of America” campaign, the largest photographic project in American history, in 1986. His photos of Nelson Mandela, who was released after 27 years in a South African prison, garnered White numerous awards in 1996. On a trip to former Yugoslavia with Reverend Jesse Jackson in 1999, White documented the momentous release of three captured United States soldiers. “A photographer can be the eyes for the world,” White told the New Catholic Explorer. “It's a privilege and a tremendous responsibility.”

It's hard not to read John H. White's DOCUMERICA series as a love letter to Black Chicago. Whether capturing protesters or checkers players, concerts or chores, White's work feels animated by a wonder and curiosity for the great breadth of stories and characters he encountered while exploring his adopted home city — “life”, as he put it in the captions to several of his images, “in all its seasons”.

While still in his twenties, White (b. 1945) was contracted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as part of DOCUMERICA, a project that sought to produce a visual record of the nation and its people with a particular — but not an exclusive — focus on ecology. The program made use of local photographers around the country and generally provided little in the way of guidelines or restrictions on subject matter; collectively, White and the rest of the DOCUMERICA cohort produced over 20,000 images, often using the openness of their assignment to create a body of work that shines not just with environmental urgency but with artistic vision too.

In its ambition to present as capacious an account of contemporary American life as possible, DOCUMERICA was a spiritual successor to the Farm Security Administration's Great Depression-era photography, which project director Gifford Hampshire cited as a major source of inspiration. Indeed, White is often spoken of alongside Gordon Parks, whose photographs for the FSA and the Office of War Information constitute crucial documents of Black American life in the mid-twentieth century.

Originally from Lexington, North Carolina, White was interested in photography from a young age. In an interview with NPR, he recounted buying his first camera at the age of thirteen with ten Bazooka bubble gum wrappers and fifty cents from his grandmother; his father later gave him his first “assignment”, that of documenting the ruins of their church in the wake of a fire. The numerous accolades White has received over the course of his career include the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography in 1982, making him one of only a few Black photographers to have been so recognized. Extraordinarily, the committee awarded him the prize not for a single photograph or series, as is typical, but for “consistently excellent work on a variety of subjects”. Clarence Williams, who studied photography under White before also winning the Pulitzer, characterized his former mentor's photographs of Chicago as “an earnest visual stream of consciousness that is tightly edited and that explores a city and its people through various moods that span what it means to be alive.”

It is notable that even White's snapshots of joy and play are often paired with captions (composed by the photographer himself) that frame the scene within larger economic realities: elevated unemployment rates, wage discrimination, and the difficulties Black business owners faced opening and keeping afloat their stores amid racial prejudice from white clientele. In several of his photographs, children in the foreground are dwarfed by the looming husks of abandoned housing blocks behind them — largely salvageable buildings that White notes “have been systematically vacated as a result of fires, vandalism or failure by the owners to provide basic tenant services” before being “razed and replaced with highrise apartments which appeal to few members of the Black community”. By placing these subjects within the framing of an EPA-funded project, White and the directors of DOCUMERICA drew an implicit connection between suburbanization and divestment from cities, on the one hand, and environmental racism on the other — analysis that rings with enduring resonance today.

But by far the dominant impression that White's portraits of Black Chicago exude is of life and liveliness. Genuine care for his subjects comes through in the way his experimentation with angles monumentalizes the workers he photographed. White's DOCUMERICA work exhibits a talent for picking out moments of individual emotion amid crowds — whether the tears of a woman listening to a speech by Elijah Muhammad or the rapt concentration of a little boy executing drill team moves at a talent show. Yet in interviews White generally frames himself as a humble conduit, someone who captures more than he composes. “I dont really take pictures”, he said at one point. “Moments come when pictures take themselves.”

While everybody else was stunned and upset that The Chicago Sun-Times had fired its entire photography staff, I couldn't stop thinking of one man. They did that to John White? The Chairman of the Board? That's like the Bulls getting rid of Michael Jordan.

For a hot minute, my South Side Chicago roots took over — I was ready to roll down.

DESCRIPTIONM. Spencer Green/Associated Press John H. White at a June 6 protest in front of The Chicago Sun Times's headquarters.

John was the photographer I looked up to when I was an intern at The Chicago Daily News, where he was working in the early 1970s. My godfather, John Tweedle, told me to look him up. John looked out for me, encouraged me and nudged my career. I watched him on the streets, in the darkroom and even stood by his side as he carefully put together the portfolio that won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1982.

When I visited him, he was not letting the firing change how he felt about himself, or his fellow photographers, one bit.

“A job's not a job because of labor law,” he said. “It's just something you love. It's something you do because it gives you a mission, a life, a purpose, and you do it for the service of others.”

All he had wanted to hear from the executives who let him go was two words that never came: thank you. But even then, he did not respond with anger.

“I light candles, I don't curse the darkness,” he said. “Even now, my colleagues are cursing the darkness. I'm lighting the candles. And I give wings to dreams, I ain't breaking no wings. I'm not clipping any wings. Make a difference in the world. One light. One day. One image.”

John taught me how to fly.

I had been taking pictures since high school, but when I got to The Daily News, I was a copy-girl intern. But I also tried to copy John the minute I saw him walk through the newsroom after an assignment. I would sneak away and go back toward the darkroom — his chapel away from church — and watch him unload his cameras and ask him about his day.

I even tried to walk like he walked. I had seen a lot of photographers on assignment, but to find John White, you had to look in the shadows. He was never where you could see him. He was always where he could be, like he was hovering over in a corner. Like he could see everything in a room. He had this look. He kept his camera low-key. And all of a sudden, he'd pick it up and find the real subject. The one you hadn't seen before.

He didn't do this for prizes, though he won a lot of them. He did it for “consistent excellence.” And for as long as he had been taking pictures, it never got boring or predictable.

“I've got the same set of eyes, nothing's changed,” he said. “Every day, a baby is born. Every day, someone dies. Every single day. And we capture everything in between. You think of this thing called life and how it's preserved. It's preserved through vision, through photographs.”

DESCRIPTIONJohn H. White “Ice House.”

You've probably figured out by now that John thought about bigger things. He was a religious man, born on a Sunday into a family of preachers in North Carolina. When he tells one and all to “keep in flight,” it's as much spiritual advice as it is professional. He takes that advice himself, even after the slight of seeing one of his pictures published in his old paper with only “Sun-Times Library” as the credit line.

“I can't get caught up in those things,” he said. “You got to look at the big picture, because I know the true photo editor.”

Like a good storyteller — or a preacher — he taught with examples from his life, often talking about moments with his father in North Carolina. He remembered one night walking through a wooded patch with his father, who reached out and grabbed a firefly.

“Look at my hand,” his father said as he gently squeezed the insect. “And look what he's doing. He's making a light. He can't contain his light. God gives us light and we can't contain this light. Be like the lightning bug. Don't let anyone contain your light.”

I was still an intern when, despite protests from some of the other staff photographers, I was sent out to cover how children were dealing with a teachers strike. I went out to Cabrini-Green, passed by a dentist's office and saw a boy sitting in the chair. I went in and asked if I could photograph the dentist, and he agreed.

Nothing much was happening.

I thought it was going to be a boring picture. All of a sudden, the dentist yanked a tooth from the kid's mouth. He didn't tell me he was going to do this. The kid's eyes crossed and his mouth was open. The paper ran it with “He'd Rather Be in School” as the caption. That shot helped the other photographers accept me.

“Everybody remembers that picture, a billion-dollar picture,” John said. “People realized then that she's doing what we did, she's spreading her wings and trying to fly, and you know, it's like you were that lightning bug. You didn't let them contain you and keep you down.”

I swear I didn't even know what the Pulitzer was when I watched him assemble the portfolio that would earn him journalism's highest prize. I stood beside him in the darkroom as he printed (with a towel slung over his left shoulder). I watched him put paper, make careful measurements and lay out a story. He showed me how to tell a story.

Years later, John and I both covered Pope John Paul II's Mass in Central Park. I showed off my computer and my new digital camera. I was proud of where he had helped me get. But not as proud as he was.

“It's like your child,” he told me. “And they got a touchdown. You know what I mean? And it wasn't a Hail Mary touchdown, you know what I mean? It was from one end of the line to the other. You know? It required a lot, but you got the touchdown. This is the journey. You go through storms, rain and hurricanes, and forces of evil. You know. But you keepin' the fight.”

John, I was just doing what you taught me: staying in flight and sharing the light.

John H. White (*1945) is a renowned American photojournalist. His photography documents the everyday lives and political events in American cities, particularly Chicago. He was a staff photographer on the Chicago Sun-Times for 35 years, and won a Pulitzer prize in 1982.

Our exhibition concentrates on photographs depicting life for families living in Chicago housing projects in the 1980s. The controversial dissolution of the Sun-Times photography department earlier this year stirred up much debate regarding the significance of photojournalism.

We are therefore particularly pleased to present this exhibition of works by one of the world's most influential photojournalists as a testament to the enduring importance of this occupation.

John H. White (born 1945 in Lexington, North Carolina) is an American photojournalist, recipient of a Pulitzer Prize in 1982. When John H. White was nine years old, a teacher told him that he would grow up to work on a garbage truck because he was slow in math. At home, his father told him to grow up to be his best, to look for the best in others, and if he were to work on a garbage truck, fine—just be sure hes the driver. White has said that this was a turning point in his life. Whites father also played a pivotal role in his photography. At age 14, Whites church burned down and his father asked him to take photos of the destruction and reconstruction. White now credits this first assignment with his focus on photo stories.

After working for the Chicago Daily News, White joined the staff of the Chicago Sun Times in 1978 and worked there until May 2013. White also teaches photojournalism at Columbia College Chicago, and formerly taught at Northwestern University. In 1973 and 1974 White worked for the Environmental Protection Agency`s DOCUMERICA project photographing Chicago and its African American community. Whites photographs show the difficulties facing residents as well as their spirit and pride.

White was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Photojournalism in 1982 for his "consistently excellent work on a variety of subjects." He was selected as a photographer for the 1990 project Songs of My People. White has also won three National Headliner Awards, was the first photographer inducted into the Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame, was awarded the Chicago Press Photographer Associations Photographer of the Year award five times, and, in 1999, received the Chicago Medal of Merit. Hal Buell, the former head of the Associated Press Photography Service, noted that White is one of the best photographers at capturing the everyday vignette. White has published a book about Cardinal Bernardin, but he has yet to publish a book of his work outside the religious realm.

White has said that he lives by three words: faith, focus, flight. "Im faithful to my purpose, my mission, my assignment, my work, my dreams. I stay focused on what Im doing and whats important. And I keep in flight—I spread my wings and do it."

John H. White

One of Central Piedmont's most famous alumni is photographer John White. He graduated from Central Piedmont in 1966 with an applied sciences degree and a focus in art-photography. Throughout his career, John White went on to receive numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize in 1982 for his work as a photographer at the Chicago Sun-Times, which documented life of African-American communities in Chicago's Southside neighborhood. John White was the first (and perhaps the only) community college graduate in history to win a Pulitzer Prize.

To celebrate this momentous achievement, Central Piedmont invited John White to the campus, where he was honored with the Richard Hagemeyer Educational Advancement Award and Mayor John Belk declared June 11, 1982 as “John White Day.”

"John White Day" Archival Materials

A studio portrait taken by the CPCC Media Production Department of John White holding his camera.

A handwritten document with details about the ceremony honoring John White.

A North Carolina National Bank invitation to the reception honoring John White.

The itinerary for the Hagemeyer Award Ceremony held on June 11, 1982.

John White standing beside CPCC's “Meet John White” sign.

John White and his son.

John White and his family at the ceremony.

John White and Mike Myers at an event honoring Mr. White and his family, where Mr. Myers presented him with the Hagemeyer Award.

A personal message from John White to E. Fay Foster written on the title page of The Final Journey of Joseph Cardinal Bernardin (1997).

A photo of John White with Joseph Cardinal Bernardin in The Final Journey of Joseph Cardinal Bernardin (1997).

OUR MISSION

The mission of the Chicago Alliance of African-American Photographers is:

To photographically document the culture, society, and history of African-Americans, its communities, residents and their ethnic exchange in the Greater Chicago area and throughout the world.

To promote the work of professional and amateur photographers through sponsored exhibitions, publications, lectures and education in the field of photography, and its related genre.

To Use our photographic images and expertise to inform the public and our community about the importance of photography as an informative and creative medium of expression.

CAAAP is open to all commercial, fine art, freelance,

and newspaper photographers interested in supporting these efforts.

OUR BEGINNINGS

The Chicago Alliance of African-American Photographers (CAAAP) founded on March 8, 1999, by seven photographers; Leslie Adkins, Bob Black, Martha Brock, Milbert O. Brown Jr., Terry Harris, Brent Jones and Lee Landry. Their initial goal was to document Chicagos African-American communities at the turn of the 21st Century. The primary objectives of the organization grew to unify Chicago based professional African-American photographers, and promote the art of photography through exhibitions, lectures and educational programs.

The membership of the Chicago Alliance of African-American Photographers is composed of commercial, fine art, freelance, documentary, newspaper photojournalists, and amateur photographers. Their talents cover the full spectrum of photography from street artists and news, to studio photography. Although many of our members are established professionals, some are hobbyists. However, all of our members share a passion for the art of photography, and its power to inform, educate and record history. Our membership has included three Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalists, and a former Chicago Tribune photojournalist named Ovie Carter, who won the 1975 Pulitzer for International Reporting. Milbert O. Brown Jr. and Ovie Carter were members of the Chicago Tribunes 2001 Pulitzer Prize-winning team for Explanatory Reporting. The Chicago Sun-Times John H. White, won the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography. The original project, "The Journey: The Next 100 Years", was a photographic project documenting the culture and lifestyles of Greater Chicagos African-American communities at the beginning of a new millennium. Over 50 African-American photographers from Chicago produced compelling black and white images of the first year of the new century. In 2001, The Journey: The Next 100 Years; was a featured photographic exhibition that opened concurrently at Chicagos Museum of Contemporary Art, and the legendary, community-based institution: The South Side Community Art Center in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago. Over the next twenty-four months, the exhibit traveled throughout the Chicago metropolitan area where these powerful images exhibited at public libraries, art galleries, universities, and museums.

Over the ensuing years, CAAAP members and their photographs were featured in local, national, and international publications, including the Chicago Defender, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, The New York Times, Black Enterprise Magazine, and Ebony/Jet Magazines. Members have participated in educational lectures and exhibits at Loyola University, Northwestern University, University of Illinois – Chicago and Roosevelt University. Our members have also made appearances on local media, radio, and television, and interviewed in Vibe Magazine, and The New York Times. In 2006, CAAAP produced and published a book of the project "The Journey: The Next 100 Years"; featuring over 300 images by 70 CAAAP members from 2000 through 2005.

In 2006, with funding provided from the Chicago Tribune Foundation, assistance from Roosevelt University, and the Chicago History Museum, CAAAP produced and published a book of the project “The Journey: The Next 100 Years”; featuring over 300 images, produced by 70 CAAAP members from 2000 through 2005.

Chicago[a] is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 census,[9] it is the third-most populous city in the United States after New York City and Los Angeles. As the seat of Cook County, the second-most populous county in the U.S., Chicago is the center of the Chicago metropolitan area, often colloquially called "Chicagoland" and home to 9.6 million residents.

Located on the shore of Lake Michigan, Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837 near a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed. It grew rapidly in the mid-19th century.