+ I'm a Long Neck, Delaware-based photojournalist with 54 years of experience, most recently as Director of Photography at the Times Herald-Record (Middletown, N.Y.) and long-time writer and photographer of the 845LIFE column. Now retired.
+ Long ago and far away, I trained under LIFE Magazine photographer Bernard Hoffman and began my newspaper career in 1972, shooting 6-7 assignments a day, souping prints in a crappy darkroom while eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Yup, I'm a Boomer.
+ That was when newspapers were black-and-white and Tri-X film was king. The other press photographers were grumpy old men who smoked too much, hid bottles of rum in the darkroom and grudgingly gave up secrets. I listened, learned and tried not to inhale.
+ Since then my full-time job has been creating photographs for newspapers in seven states including one of the smallest in New Mexico and one of the largest in New York City. I've shot U.S. presidents, college and pro sports, famous musicians, boring politicians, hurricanes, natural disasters, the rich and famous and the poor and not-so-famous.
+ My work has won hundreds of awards, has been published internationally and locally in the TH-R, Orange Magazine and Ulster Magazine. At the New York Daily News I was part of a team nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 for coverage of the Sept. 11 attacks and I was an elector for college football's Heisman Trophy. I've traveled around the world and produced four coffee-table sized photography books during that time. Yup, I'm a Boomer.
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A Note about Bernard Hoffman: The poet Carl Sandburg once described Bernard Hoffman (1913-1979) as “Camera historian .. . man of philosophy and whim.” The two met at a shoot at the poet’s house. Sandburg let his 15 goats inside so the creatures wouldn’t freeze, then entertained one and all with his guitar. “They listened politely,” Hoffman said of the goats. His official company biography reads: “When I began to work for Time Inc., Dad was so mortified by what I had done, that he promptly moved to a different neighborhood.” Hoffman is best remembered for his stark pictures of Japan just after the atomic blasts.
- Excerpted from "Great LIFE Magazine Photographers" website.
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Copyright: John DeSanto, 1971-2025