Marylin Monroe-Gentlemen prefer Blondes 
Gordon Jackson, Georgia 1954 Ed Clark
(1912 – 2000)
“If a photograph can arrest you for a moment, then you’ve really got something.”
Marylin Monroe-Gentlemen prefer Blondes
Gordon Jackson, Georgia 1954
Ed
Clark's career as a professional photographer spanned a period of 60 years,
during which time he became an internationally known photojournalist. Born in
Nashville, Mr. Clark dropped out of high school to join the Nashville Tennessean
as a staff photographer. He had never used a professional camera before, but he
was 'willing and cheap." As time passed he became the crack photographer
for the Tennessean and his pictures were being widely bought by newspapers and
magazines in the U.S., the UK, Denmark and Holland. In 1936 he became a stringer
for LIFE magazine, and in 1944 he joined its staff. It was the picture of
Sergeant Alvin York, World War I hero, enlisting for service that caught LIFE's
eye, and they ran it for two pages, invited him to Washington, gave him a few
assignments and offered him a job. Clark initially turned it down as he did not
want to leave Nashville, but he began freelancing regularly for LIFE. Eighteen
months later he joined LIFE's photographic staff, where he worked for 22 years.
During that time, his assignments took him to Beverly Hills, Paris, Moscow,
London and Washington D.C.
It
was the spring of 1945 and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the country's only
four-term president, who led a shattered American people through the Depression
and most of the Second World War, had just died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage.
Ed Clark drove all night from Nashville to Warm Springs, Georgia to cover the
news. He arrived to a swarm of photographers, all trying to get the best view of
the hearse carrying Roosevelt's coffin. It was then that Clark heard one of
Roosevelt's favorite hymns Goin'Home being played on an accordion. With his
Leica camera in hand, he snapped a few frames of Navy bandsman Gordon Jackson
with tears streaming down his face as he played. Apparently, no one else had
seen what Clark had seen, and Clark's dramatic photograph became the symbol of a
nation in grief. This photo took up an entire page in the next issue of LIFE.
Clark
was present at many of the historic moments of the 20th Century. He photographed
Hermann Goering, the German Luftwaffe commander at the Nuremberg war crime
trials. He was the only photographer allowed in the Oval Office on Eisenhower's
last day as President; he followed J.F.K. on the presidential campaign trail and
was the only photographer invited to the reception when Humphrey Bogart and
Lauren Becall wed.
Clark's
colleague from LIFE, Hugh Sidney once said that "Clark had the eye of an
artist." He said that Clark had the ability to make deeply moving images
without intruding on his subject's life. "You just did not know he was
there," said Sidney. Clark would do anything to get a story - standing in
the freezing cold, climbing trees, handing out fistfuls of money for tips: he
tipped a steward to let him on FDR's funeral train in 1945 and then hid in the
men's room. He became the first Western photographer to photograph Moscow in 30
years. His hotel room overlooked Red Square, and when the secret police would
not allow a festival there to be photographed, Clark returned to his room and
snapped pictures from the balcony while the agents pounded on his door. While
covering the struggle in Little Rock, Arkansas, over integration of the schools,
Clark had his son pose as a student, enabling the boy to take exclusive photos
inside the school.
In
1963, LIFE needed to trim its operating budget, so the magazine cut one third of
its photography staff, including Clark. He was almost half-blind at the time. He
decided to hang up his camera and became a building contractor in Bethesda,
Maryland, but he never stopped taking pictures in his head. Then in 1982, his
family convinced him to see a doctor, who removed his cataract and implanted a
new lens. The operation opened a whole new world for him: he did not realize how
much he had not been able to see. In 1991, Mr. Clark came to Nashville State
Tech to learn new methods and technology of black and white and color printing.
It was his relationship with the college's photography department that prompted
him to donate his collection to Nashville State Tech. The Ed Clark Gallery is
the only permanent collection of Mr. Clark's photographs. Mr. Clark moved to
Sarasota, Florida where he lived with his wife Joyce until his death.
Ed
Clark did not try to articulate what photography meant to him: "A
philosophy would screw me up," he said. "Our senses are so assailed by
different things. I just tried to get people to stop.
© Galerie Stephen Hoffman