Interview with a Photographer from the American Magazine "Life" - Part Two

Author: (American) John Loengard
Publisher:
Publishing Time: Not available
Features: Hart Preston (hereinafter referred to as Preston): I was studying at Stanford University, and Charles Steinheimer was also there. At that time, I was interested in theater and wanted to become a director. Rex Hardie was the theater manager at Stanford University then, and under his care, I directed a musical. The script for the musical was written by Waldo Salt, who later won an Oscar for the script of "Midnight Cowboy." Another person who helped me write the script was Bill Rogers, the son of a humorist.
John Loengard (hereinafter referred to as John): You were interested in theater and film at that time, but why did you end up becoming a photographer?
Preston: In 1936, Life magazine appeared, which was an extremely exciting event. In San Francisco, I was roommates with Steinheimer. There was also another classmate from Stanford, Jack Allen, who worked at the Time-Life magazine office. We went to see him and showed him some photos we had taken. He gave us a couple of assignments. By 1938, I signed a contract with Life magazine and began working for them. We Americanized America, providing photos to the public. We had a weekly deadline, and by Thursday, the new issue of the magazine would be on shelves across the country. At that time, you could say we were like Walter Cronkite (an American famous television journalist and news program host in the 1990s. Note). When I signed the contract with Life magazine to work for them, I had never been to New York, and I couldn’t think of any excuse to go there. Carl Mydans did a story on United Airlines, flying across the entire country; Peter Stackpole did a story on the railroad "Super Chief" train, traveling from Chicago to Los Angeles; and another person did a story on a long-distance bus trip. So, I suggested to Life magazine that we do a story on a hiker. They agreed. I found a college student who was planning to go to Bennington, and I sent him off. I followed him across America. That story ran on seven pages in Life magazine. When I went to New York to see photo editor Wilson Hicks, he said to send the film to our darkroom for processing, which was on the fourth floor of a hotel on 48th Street. There, I met Dmitri Kessel and Bob Capa, and another person whose name I can’t remember, but the atmosphere of like-minded people was great. The darkroom was on the fourth floor, and the bar was on the ground floor—everything was in place. They developed the film I took, and I selected the photos I wanted to enlarge. Of course, I didn’t participate in the final layout. Life magazine usually sent photographers to shoot five stories but only used one of them, so it was very difficult for your photos to compete in the fierce selection process for a particular issue.
John: How do you feel about the stories you’ve shot?
Preston: Recently, I went through my scrapbook of all the stories I’ve shot, and from a photographic perspective, I found only a few that made me feel proud. You might say I’m just a reporter, just a photographer. From a photographic aesthetic point of view, I really can’t say how exciting they are. They are just stories—they have beginnings, middles, and endings, just like written news reports. I was just reporting with photos. At that time, Life magazine often said, "A picture is worth a thousand words." That’s not necessarily true. A writer at Life magazine might say, "A word is worth a thousand pictures." The management of Life magazine always said we were the best photographers in the world, but in reality, I think they just saw us as skilled but poorly educated people. That was also one of the reasons I switched from photography to writing.
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