The Art of Photojournalism: Image of the Month
A Portrait of Evil, 5th May 1981, Daily Express, by John Rogers
By Alan Sparrow
I think we have all seen the impact of still images in recent days. The photograph by Reuters photographer Phil Noble of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor returning home after police questioning had far more impact than the video taken by his colleague.
Newspaper picture editors give considerable thought to their choice of images, especially when they are images of a sensitive nature including scenes of death and injury. Readers of newspapers can linger long on the detail, dwell on the terrible nature of the photograph, far more easily than on the brief moving images from the TV screen. The impact of this frozen moment in time has more power than the moving image.
Self-editing by British picture editors is essential. Newspapers like the Mail or the Sun might have over 100,000 images per day, and some of those would not be acceptable in a family newspaper. In other countries different rules apply. Papers throughout the Middle East have no qualms about using pictures that include death or terrible injury, pictures that would be totally unacceptable in the UK. So often have I sat in the company of non-newspaper folk who are amused by the apparent futility of photographers shooting optimistically through the window of the prisoner carriers, hoping that they can get a focused, well exposed image of the occupant of the vehicle.
But as Reuters’ Phil Noble said about his car shot, “it’s more luck than judgement”. To create this lucky moment, however, Phil had brought to bear the news sense of a seasoned pro, had driven five hours from Manchester and doorstepped the police station for six hours. Fortunately for him, a tip-off whittled the dozens of potential stations down, otherwise his journey could have been a waste of time.
He still nearly missed the opportunity when he decided to head back to his vehicle just as the cars belonging to the former Prince Andrew arrived at the police station, but, as he told the BBC, a call from Reuters colleague Marissa Davison alerted him and he returned to the police station’s entrance in time to see the cars departing. Of the six photos he took two showed police officers, two were blank and one was out of focus. The last one has been seen all over the world.
"Is it the best photo you’ve ever taken?” he was asked by the BBC. “No”. “Is it up there with most important?” “100%".
An earlier success story of the car shot is this picture of the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe, taken by John Rogers for the Daily Express. Rogers was a young freelance who had only been working for the Express for around four months.
He was one of 20 photographers who were on duty that day for the Daily Express with the specific challenge of getting a photograph of Sutcliffe, who was due to appear that day at the Old Bailey charged with the murder of 13 women. Creatively, two of the photographers were on the pillion of motorcycles.
Rogers had travelled the route the day before the trial opened. He calculated that there were two possible routes from Brixton Prison to the Old Bailey, one via Blackfriars Bridge and the other across Waterloo Bridge. He plumped for Waterloo. Along the route at Red Lion Square there is a high wall, about three foot high, high enough to see into the van, and this was the strategic point Rogers chose for his picture. Arriving before eight in the morning he was perched on the wall which gave him a view through the streets of London. In the distance he saw the convoy of three vehicles, a police car and a prison van followed by another police car, approaching. He had no idea what Peter Sutclife looked like.
As it neared he could see the convoy slowed by traffic, so he took his chances and abandoned his high wall to run towards the convoy. Fortune smiled because the vehicles slowed enough for him to get close enough to take a photograph through each of the blacked-out windows. He was not sure what he had got until the film had been processed and the darkroom produced a print, so he was delighted when the picture editor confirmed that he had been successful in getting the first photograph of the Yorkshire Ripper since being captured. A World Exclusive for the new kid on the block at the Daily Express.
I asked what he thought of the Phil Noble picture: “Fantastic, just fantastic, the quality was brilliant”.
Despite what Phil and John say, sometimes it’s more about judgement than luck.
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