50+ years of photo journalism. Please read the "About" tab for the introduction. Click on photos for topic.. Click the "Work" tab to see the chapters. Click on a chapter image to see the rest.
Photo journalism has many formats. It can tell a story, take one to distant places, and be a time vault accessible without breaking it open.
Some are surprised that the Magnum Photo Agency did significant post-war work for travel magazines, airlines, displaying the work of government and non-government agencies in addition to the more recognized news and events coverage.
The legacy for the photographers is usually individual pictures that can tell the story “in a thousand words.”
Jumping out of third person JRV and going to first person. In making this site a “Living Book” I had to determine the format. There are images that have visual impact or make a statement that can stand alone, and they can also be part of a series.
The web design format offered six panels permitting to me organize my work into six distinct categories, which seemed rich enough, and capable of holding many photos.
So the six pages were made as: City and Town, Country, Work, Events, Play and Leisure, and Sky and Water. These categories made it possible to have photos from various places mixed within the categories. I have visited the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. It has idiosyncratic assemblies of art, artifacts and other things in each room. It was very interesting and the staying power in a room was much longer than a museum with just art hanging on the walls.
To some extent, I’ve modeled the format on the rich assemblies I witnessed at the Barnes Foundation.
I looked at two areas in my inventory that are different:
Peggy’s Cove in Nova Scotia is a very small town and would easily be described as a travelogue. In a two week stay in 1973 I could not make a poor picture.
The Boston Veterans Day parade covered from 1968 to 1970 is something different. I find parades and fairs very interesting because they are live theater with different setups. There are actors and an audience. For me, the very nature of these activities render all participants as actors. The marchers are the active actors, the viewers are the reacting actors. On the stage there can be roles where the actor or actress has very few lines but is the center of the story by virtue of their reactions to those around them. Most of my photos of parades and fairs have a significant number of “off stage” actors
With that in mind I have built on the numerous images of the Veterans Day Parade — photographs that find an equal fascination in the varied expressions of marchers and the sometimes surprising reactions of the onlookers.
The “Contact” button in the “About” section is an email function through which you may send comments or questions to JRV.
Thank you, Jim Vaseff (JRV)
This photo was in The Harvard Independent weekly paper which was established in 1969. JRV is among the founders and it is still running 52 years later. The paper was printed south of town and we found out that the printer was the grandson of the WW I veteran in the picture.
The March on Washington. The Harvard Independent covered the event. The first two photos show the early morning and mid-day. See the caption for third picture
Late afternoon. If this woman is still with us, she is probably a grandmother. JRV returned to Cambridge at midnight to find his apartment burned down. Thus, many pictures before late 1969 were lost.
In April 1969 Harvard’s University Hall was taken over by students and occupied for 10 days. Similar activities occurred in a number of schools around that time.
In April of 1970, an anti-war demonstration marched from the Boston Common to Harvard square and the “Harvard Square Riot” commenced complete with tear gas, broken windows and other damage.
On May 8, 1970 there was a demonstration at Soldier Field, Harvard Stadium following the May 4, 1970 Kent State shootings. there were numerous similar demonstrations across the country.
There was one troupe of actors who organized and performed a “Silent Protest.” They quietly marched with a dramatic much oversized puppet head. It was an eerie sight as the troupe walked into and through the large field. The crowd that was adjacent to the march fell into silence as they passed through.
Alas! A bit of archaic Boston came through the crowd, a peanut vendor with his push cart.
New Orleans probably has more parades than there are Church Holidays.
Photo tip 2. Via request, this photo tip is Color vs B/W. There are two primary variables between the two; color itself and the contrast range between the two. This is about color.
Note in the B/W photo is focused on, or even “all about,” the girl looking at the boy.
There is nothing that distracts from that focus.
Everything else is background in the image.
Photo Tip 2. Here is the color original. The focus on the girl is diminished, maybe even lost with color: the pink fabric on the left, the green purse in the background (a background that hardly exists in B/W) the boy’s burgundy, shirt, the yellow to the right of him, the red flower and green leaves in her hair and more, are all distractions in this photo. This photo comparison was chosen because the color variations are more subtle than in most pictures. Imagine the purse as scarlet, the shirt as an athletic jersey, etc.
A thank you note to JRV for a picture (City Life, first photo, Boston 1969, two scouts peeking around the corner of the Old Boston State House ) quoted Ted Grant:
“A color photo is a picture of your purse, a black and white photo is a picture of your soul!”