New York Commissioner of Corrections Russell Oswald at attica prison riot
Portraits that tell a story
It’s been awhile since my last post; sometimes life gets in the way. I have started a new web site, which you will see the link for in the upper left corner of my blog page. I hope you enjoy it and if you’re interested in purchasing prints, please contact me.
In looking through my pictures for the web site I started to think about portraits and how they have changed over the years. Early portraits were very formal. People sat before the camera dead still, the exposures often lasted twenty or thirty seconds. They were often beautifully posed but beyond a strong look in the eyes, a turn of a shoulder, the nature of what they wore, the viewer new little about who they were.
Russell Oswald was the New York Commissioner of Corrections. The Attica prison riot left a deep stain on the America conscious; see my August 6, 2009 post. We lived in a world of deep denial, we had fought a war very few supported and race relations in America, was nearing an all time low. Oswald was one of the good guys who took a fall for the man above. Nelson Rockefeller was the governor of New York at the time of the Attica prison riot. Everyone wanted him to come to the prison, talk with the prisoners, make things right. He didn’t come.
Oswald had been a reformer. He cared about the inmates. He wanted them to leave prison better people than when they came. He cared about family and had set up a program where wives could spend the weekend with their husbands twice a year. He developed retraining programs that worked and hired a stream of consultants who delivered on his promise.
1972 had been a turbulent year for me. I had covered a story on George Jackson, the Black Panthers leader who was killed in San Quentin in an alleged prison escape that never happened. Prison authorities said that he had a gun in his hair when he escaped but anyone who knew him recognized the fallacy of this statement: at a half inch it would be hard to hide a gun in his hair.
I was traveling twenty-nine days a month and breaking up with my girlfriend as a result. I was very much alone and trying to find myself in all that I had covered. People seemed to be very happy with my pictures but I found it hard to be an observer, which by now was my life’s first rule. I had covered gangs and race riots of all kinds and just watched people at their worst. Hardest of all was that there was no one to talk to about what I was feeling. Making a great picture that was all that mattered.
Attica prison was not far from Buffalo. I had just gotten home from the Jackson story and I had turned off my phone. My girlfriend and I were lying in bed when we heard a loud knock on the door. It was Bob Stokes, a writer from Life magazine. A riot seemed to be starting at the Attica prison. I packed quickly and we were off.
There must have been 500 journalists when we got there on that rain-filled morning but I was lucky. The inmates wanted me inside as an observer, a merit badge for all the civil rights stories I had covered. Early on in the struggle, a prison guard who had been taken hostage had been killed and the inmate leaders didn’t want anymore violence, just their rights. Getting inside was a lucky break for me. For Bob, his view from the outside would later cost him his job.
I remember the sound of the doors closing behind me as I entered the prison. There was no way out. I walked one dark hall after the other. There was dark grit on the walls and the wet floors squeaked from all the rain that had fallen and the many broken windows. The prison had a hard smell, one of unwashed flesh from too few showers. It was a place of cold food and a concrete bed. It was a time before cell phones. I was on my own and I was ready to take whatever pictures I could. I spent time in cellblock D where the inmates were camped. Everyone was one edge. Voices came over loud speakers from outside the prison wall. ‘Put down your arms or we’re coming in,’ they said. Not a man flinched.
I remember a big man as tall as a redwood tree who grabbed my arm between two large fingers and said, “Remember this day son, you’ve never done time till now and if we see a morning sun it will be a day you remember for the rest of your life.”
The next day I worked my way to a part of the prison where all of the officials and other members of the press were encamped. It was about an hour before all hell would break loose. A last call had been put into the governor’s office and with no response, the decision to move on the inmates rested on Russell Oswald’s shoulders.
A TV cameraman tested his lights and Oswald was standing alone in the corner of the room where we all waited. When I saw the light hit his face it was clear to me that here was a man under pressure and man who saw his life’s work turn to ashes, a man alone, hung out to dry. You could see it in his eyes, the lines of his face—a big man made small. It was the third day of a stalemate. He had little choice. He ordered the guards to retake the prison. Oswald was a great man; his name now lives in infamy.
In the split second in which the camera lights illuminated Oswald’s face, I was able to create a portrait that told his story.
