Booknotes

ARTHUR GRACE, AUTHOR, "CHOOSE ME": Well basically it was an idea that Newsweek came up with in early 1987 around last January early February. They wanted to do something different with the Presidential Candidates. Portraits but not..they weren't sure what they wanted to do but just a different idea. So Newsweek picture editor Karen McLarkey approached me and said do you have any ideas on this. What would you like to do? And I thought about it and I came up with this concept of doing in black and white in a two and a quarter format without strobe lights using only available or natural light. And we tried it out first with Gary Hart. We went out to I believe it was Cleveland early on in February of 1987 and I had the first assignment out there. I came back and showed them the photographs and they were very pleased with them. So I went on from there doing all the candidates.

ARTHUR GRACE: It was interesting. It was almost a photograph became the title came after the photograph. Once we had that photograph this was much later on I decided that would be the cover of the book. And then I was almost thinking of a title to go with the photograph and it seemed to fit the bill.

ARTHUR GRACE: Well it's..once again it was the winner. The winner went on the cover. So that was part of it. Whoever won the election, became the President would be on the cover of the book. So obviously that was George Bush. And that was the one really pointing to himself choose me, pick me, elect me. Which is what they are really doing for 18 months out there on the hustings.

ARTHUR GRACE: Right. Unfortunately the loser went on the back. And that's Michael Dukkas. And again it's not that we had a lot of pictures of him looking ebullient and victorious. It's simply that this really represented a lot of the Dukkas campaign. Of being almost isolated and alone and there was a wrap all along that he wasn't listening to advisors and things like that. It's just as a photograph I liked it very much as being a strong graphic image.

ARTHUR GRACE: Basically Sam..they're all friends of mine number one. Sam and I started in politics in 1975 covering Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter primaries. That's when I first met Sam and I've known him ever since and we went on. I covered the White House for Time magazine the late 70's and Sam and I were on that campaign together. I mean at that point in the White House we went to Egypt with Carter and Sadat. I've just known him for years. Jim Wooten I used to work for the New York Times in the Boston office as New England photo correspondent. And Jim Wooten and I met in 1975 also covering the bicentennial at Lexington Concord. And we've been friend ever since throughout all the campaigns and I've seen over the campaigns. Jane Livingston has been a friend several years here in Washington.

ARTHUR GRACE: Yes that's the photograph that sort of symbolizes campaigning today and what the press has to go through. What we're seeing here is a rope line where the advance people for a certain candidate and this case the Dukkas people try and control the press. That is their movements, their access, where they are to go and where they are not to go. And what had been happening in the Dukkas campaign was that all along we would land at an airport and there would be two advance people and they would have a piece of clothesline and they had like a mobil pen. Instead of just a closed off pen where the press would be escorted to and you'd stay in that pen and shoot the candidate from there they got this wonderful idea of having a mobile pen. So you had two people. One with rope in each hand sort of running around making these makeshift pens where the press would go. Well the photographers, cameramen who cover a campaign are very experienced and don't need to be sort of handled in that way so there was a mini rebellion. And one day they had the idea that maybe to embarrass the candidate they would get all their laundry from the night before and they bought clothespins in one city and that was the first time it happened. Sure enough we landed in this city in Michigan, Waterford, Michigan and the candidate and we strung..they had the clothesline waiting for us and as they held it up all the cameramen and photographers just hung up their laundry. Dirty socks, underwear as you can see there just as a protest against this kind of behavior. And in fact it worked. And it was quite funny at the time. So that's what you're seeing there. The rope line. The mobile rope line and the press being sort of put off to the side.

ARTHUR GRACE: UPI. Correct. Um huh.

ARTHUR GRACE: Yeah. Very much so. Very much so. Of course it's changed over the years but the wire service is very competitive organization. AP and UPI. At that time there was no AFP and Roiters and what we have now in this city in Washington. So everything was competitive on a cycle. In other words there's a 12 hour cycle for evening papers morning papers evening papers. And also time zones. The west coast cycle and Asia. So every time you went out you were going head to head with the competition. It was fiercely competitive that way and it was a win or lose situation. Right away you won or you lost. You knew by the play reports or what your editors told you back in New York how you did. And if you took a bad picture you were able to make up for it very quickly because in the next cycle you could then beat the AP. And I was with UPI. When you move on to newspapers it's..I was the New England photo correspondent for the New York Times and in that case it was competitive on news stories but we didn't do news stories that often. So it was more feature oriented and working with writers. Now when you get to the news magazines it's a much more of a high stakes game in terms of being international and you're shooting color film your covers are very very important to the magazine. How good they look or the inside color lead on the news story. But the problem with magazine photography you can wait weeks to get published and if you have a bad picture it lives with you all week on the news stand. So it just stays there from Monday through Sunday and you wait until they take the magazines off the rack. Whereas in the newspaper business or the UPI or the wires there is a new paper every 24 hours.

ARTHUR GRACE: It's hard to say. They're very very similar. The Time magazine is more of a feature magazine in some ways. Newsweek has always seemed to be more competitive and better on breaking news stories. They are very very good in that regard. And lately they've been doing much more feature work that has been highly noted and regarded.

ARTHUR GRACE: Oh it's simply economics really. I was with Time for 12 years and eight of those seven of those contract photographer in Washington and it was a terrific job and I really enjoyed it and then a new picture editor came in at Newsweek Karen McLarkey I believe 1985 and she approached me for a staff job at Newsweek rather than a contract job. And it seemed like a great opportunity and I knew her very well and it seemed like a fun thing to do so I became a staff photographer at Newsweek.

ARTHUR GRACE: Ah. This is the famous balloon drop as they call it. And every political campaign event and this really started before Reagan but when Reagan would give a speech in an outdoor rally or even inside always as people remember there was..balloons fell from the sky or came up behind him always red white and blue. Always very patriotic and this became standard operating procedure on campaigns especially if it was an outdoor rally. So I don't know whether people ever understand where do they get these balloons? Or how do they all of a sudden appear miraculously behind the candidate. And in a convention hall for instance they hold them in the rafters and they have netting there and they let go of the netting and they all fall down. But an outdoor rally they really have balloon keepers like this. And these people are campaign volunteers who are literally their job in that rally is to man the balloon net and at the proper signal let go of the balloons so they come up on cue behind the candidates. Michael Dukkas was speaking right in front of them.

ARTHUR GRACE: Correct.

ARTHUR GRACE: Right.

ARTHUR GRACE: Well each person was different in their own way. Certainly Bruce Babbitt was very very easy to be with and fun to be with. He had no no problem with the camera. He just didn't seem to mind being photographed at any time and was very very friendly and open to still photographers. So he was a lot of fun to work with and you could always get a picture with him. And there were others Jesse Jackson is a terrific subject and some of the others. I mean we had a lot of fun along the way. And others of course are more difficult.

ARTHUR GRACE: Well Pat Robertson wasn't the easiest person in the world to photograph. And I think the reason for that is simple. He's a gentleman who makes his living on television and is very aware of the camera and very aware of camera angles and how he looks. And therefore he has his guard up at all times. And when you look at pictures of him in the book you can see that. He just notices where the camera is all the time because he's been trained and that's how he makes a living. That's his profession. Whereas the other candidates don't come from television the same way.

ARTHUR GRACE: The soft cover..you've got the hard cover most of the books out there are $19.95 list for the soft cover and I think 90% of the books are soft cover. The hard cover I believe is $40.00 for the cloth or they may have changed it again to $35.00 I'm not sure.

ARTHUR GRACE: You'd have to talk to the publisher about that. Obviously it's more expensive to manufacture a hard cover book with a binding etc. and the flap and the jacket I believe. I'm not that accomplished in publishing to really tell you. But it's a kind of rule of thumb as soft cover costs this much a hard cover costs x amount more. And I believe it's a formula.

ARTHUR GRACE: Um hum.

ARTHUR GRACE: University Press of New England.

ARTHUR GRACE: And distributed for Brandeis University Press. Right.

ARTHUR GRACE: Right.

ARTHUR GRACE: Okay. First of all Newsweek. It's a Newsweek book because all these photographs were shot while on assignment for Newsweek. Newsweek owns the copyright to the photographs and they gave me permission to produce this book. Although was independently produced that's why it becomes a Newsweek book. If any employees of Newsweek either reporters, writers, photographers do projects like this that is part of it that they are recognized as being with Newsweek and that's the Newsweek book part. University Press in New England has nine member universities of which Brandeis University is one member and I approached Brandeis initially to publish the book and they liked it and agreed to go ahead with it but it had to go to committee at Dartmouth which is where the press is headquartered that became University Press of New England. So Brandeis actually okayed it and it's under their title for Brandeis but it's University Press because Brandeis is part of University Press and it's a Newsweek book.

ARTHUR GRACE: Oh I don't know. I don't know. I don't think so.

ARTHUR GRACE: Correct.

ARTHUR GRACE: Price. Price. American printer to do..when you start doing black and white duotone like this it's absolutely crucial that the reproduction be first rate just top quality. And U.S. printers do a great job probably the best in the world but they are that much expensive. In Japan there is a printing house called Dinipon which is very very successful very well known now and very competitive in pricing and they've done all the Day in a Life books for instance. A lot of these color books that you see. Major color coffee table books. And they do very well with black and white. So my book agent Carol Leslie had..knows the people at Dinipon. They have a great reputation and she worked out a deal. A very competitive deal for us because we did this on a literally a shoestring budget.

ARTHUR GRACE: So that's why we went to Japan to have it done.

ARTHUR GRACE: No. No. No not at all. I just wanted the book to come out and so that wasn't an issue. But it's an interesting point you raise.

ARTHUR GRACE: To my wife who is instrumental in all the things that I do and live through this process with me and deserves a lot of credit for that. And what does it say again. "To all those driven souls who run for President and all those crazy enough to go along for the ride." Which needs no explanation. And some..I mean people the people who run for President obviously as the American public must be aware have a lot of ambition and drive and stamina and the people who go along the reporters and the press and the media also need the same qualities but it's a crazy ride that they go on for 18 months.

ARTHUR GRACE: Um hum.

ARTHUR GRACE: Right. Right. My mother remarried when I was 12 years old. So that's my stepfather.

ARTHUR GRACE: Worster, Mass. Worster, Massachusetts. So I'm a Massachusetts boy. So that's why I knew about Michael Dukkas because a lot of my family still lives there and I'm from there. I left Boston in 1977 when I left UPI and the New York Times and moved to Washington for Time Magazine.

ARTHUR GRACE: I went to Bowdoin College in Maine then went to..finished up at Brandeis University.

ARTHUR GRACE: Well it..very very young. I was maybe 10 years old 11 years old. My stepsister was Roberta Plyer who copy edited the book was a journalist at the Providence Journal a reporter at the Providence Journal and a gentleman named Wynn Parks was working there and I forget the other gentleman's name. But there were two photographers there and I was..I had some interest in cameras. She brought one of them home and they taught me a little bit about cameras. I set up a little dark room. That was the first time. I was maybe 11 or 12 when that happened. And then I I dropped it as kids do for about 10 or 12 years and then I worked on the high school yearbook. I was interested again for four months and then didn't touch a camera again for 10 years. Really almost eight years. Just didn't do it again.

ARTHUR GRACE: It was interesting. When I finally went back to school I went to Brandeis to study film making with David Harvey I mean I forget what his name..a professor named Hardy and David Westfall who also was a film maker and had a very very strong program and I started in film. I was only back there for two years to finish up college and the..I didn't like the group efforts of film. I just didn't like dealing with five six eight ten people. Somebody with the lights, the sound etc. so I started to drift back into photography. And one day it was my second year there and I was photographing..I used to photograph rocks and trees and all sorts of inanimate objects and one day I was walking by the Charles River and it was a late spring thaw and two dogs had fallen through the ice and there was a hugh rescue going on. Of people tying ropes around them and jumping in and I'm still photographing rocks and I go well why not and I turn around and start photographing this rescue. I went home and my girlfriend was there and she why..what happened today and what were you doing. It's like three hours later and I said I was by the Charles and this rescue why don't you call the paper the Boston Globe. I said why not. The film was still in my camera. I called the Boston Globe they said take a taxi we'll pay for it come down right away and they loved the picture and they put it on page 2 of the front page really big. They sent me to UPI and AP and everybody bought the pictures and they were seen around the world. So the bug bit me right then and there of this kind of journalism. Photography in journalism. And again I dropped the camera for another year and a year later finally started working at UPI as a stringer.

ARTHUR GRACE: Well I think communicating with people. That's what it's all about. I think for most most photographers they pick up a camera because they have something to say or want to say something. They're not writers and they're not poets. They pick up the camera to communicate. And it doesn't necessarily have to be in a intellectual or artistic level but just to communicate.

ARTHUR GRACE: Well the most interesting comment I mean thankfully the reviews have been good and the comments have been very positive but the most interesting comment that anyone's made is somebody..several people have said how sad the candidates look. That they look sad and I didn't..somehow that's not what I expected them to say. The sadness of the candidates. I understand why they're saying it now but I thought that was one of the more interesting comments.

ARTHUR GRACE: Um hum.

ARTHUR GRACE: That camera you see it down here is a twin lens roloflex camera. It's made in Germany and it's a two and a quarter inch square negative as opposed to 35 a rectangular negative. And this camera was popular in the '50's and early 60's by press photographers and it had its heyday at that time. Then when 35mm came it was miniature. It was much smaller and lighter and you could get 36 exposures to a roll of film instead of 12. So for this project the reason I did it I wanted a larger negative size that lent a formality to the pictures and set them apart and made them different. And the tonal range of a two and a quarter negative is much greater than a 35mm negative so you get more elegant prints. And the other main reason is it was different in terms of slowing down with the camera. With 35mm technology now Canon T 90's Nikkon F-3's you hit a button and they can go anywhere from two and half to three frames a second all the way up to six frames a second. So it's motor driven technology. Brrrrrrrrrr. Like that. That's it. This camera you wind it like this and wind it back. You take one picture. Then you have to wind it and wind it back again to take the second picture. Therefore you have to slow down and think about what you're photographing as opposed to just you know starting to shoot and warm up and then then decide that you've got the certain picture or where the photographs are heading.

ARTHUR GRACE: Right. And that's also very interesting. Yeah you look down into the camera. And most 35mm cameras are held up to your eye and you look through them straight ahead. And with this camera you look down into it. We'll take the lens cap off and I can see down through there. There a shot like that.

ARTHUR GRACE: You're looking down into the camera.

ARTHUR GRACE: And there's a magnifying piece that comes up like this which magnifies that screen that you're looking at and you see through the lens thorough that upper lens which is the viewing lens. And the other thing that's interesting about the camera is you see things in reverse. If you move to the right I have to move the camera to the left. I mean it's all backwards. You have..my pocket is on this side. Normally you looking at me through the camera this picket will be on this side. Writing is reversed. Everything is reversed so it takes a while to get used to the camera in this configuration as to where people are going because they look like they're going off in this direction and they're actually walking this way. So initially using that camera on the campaign I looked foolish on a number of occasions.

ARTHUR GRACE: Well it's interesting. They just started to manufacture it again. It's been out of production for years. I don't know how many years and now they've just come out with a new model. So the new model to get a new copy of this camera is roughly $2,000. Used depending on what lens you get on it they can go anywhere from $400 to $800.

ARTHUR GRACE: Okay. There are I believe 102 photographs in the book and I probably shot 15 times that amount. Maybe 20 times that amount. Not too much. I'm not a photographer who shoots a lot of film even with 35mm cameras. I just don't shoot that much. So I think maybe it's 20 to 1 ratio on this. That's about it.

ARTHUR GRACE: The one on this side of the page? Which one?

ARTHUR GRACE: Oh okay. This was towards..he had reentered the race again Gary Hart and he had gone and everybody was just chasing him. Chasing him down chasing him down. This was in New Hampshire as he had entered the race again and was involved in the race again and really people were just waiting for him to drop out and for it to be over. And he's outside you know Jerry's House of Subs or something in Manchester and the press gets a hold of him once again. And this is the constant symbol or image is a better word of the campaign. You'll see it in a lot of my photographs recurring image of the hand thrust out with either microphone, tape recorder, whatever because everybody's looking to get the candidate on tape so that later number one exactly what he said but if he contradicted himself at an earlier time which is kind of gotcha journalism which is what we have in national campaigns now. Anyway that's the scene. So he right outside whatever House of Subs we were at in Manchester. It's a pretty cold winter day and again the press is on him and there's the tape recorder.

ARTHUR GRACE: That was the first one first photograph taken for the project I mentioned the Newsweek project and this was..I flew out to Cleveland. I know Gary Hart very well because I covered the '84 campaign. I had talked to him and his people and I heard he was going out to Cleveland to do some campaigning. This is this was at a wealthy contributors house I believe in Shaker Heights and it was late in the afternoon and the owner of the home had a meet Gary Hart coffee klatch. And there were maybe 30 people in this giant you know very large living room elegant living room and there was a blizzard began outside. It was a raging blizzard. Hart was pondering an answer to a question when I snapped that photograph. And that light is that winter light during a blizzard actually.

ARTHUR GRACE: They were developed in several different places. Commercial labs. Newsweek own lab did some and initially Asman Photographic right here custom photo here in Washington D.C. did quite a bit of that. They also printed all the photographs reproductions for the book Kelly Reynolds.

ARTHUR GRACE: Again where he's leaning in?

ARTHUR GRACE: We're shaking hands?

ARTHUR GRACE: Oh (…. This is..okay..this is Al Haig..this is kind of a typical pose of him. He..I don't know if it's all the military experience and looking good and smart and everything in order creases pants looking just fine it just seemed like a typical Haig pose. He'd just given an interview to a local paper at the University of New Hampshire and he's just getting his clothing in line again.

ARTHUR GRACE: On the other side this was a lot of people really find this the typical campaign picture and have commented on this one. What happens when a candidate goes out they don't necessarily draw crowds number one. Number two even if there are people around people don't necessarily want to talk to them. Now this was a scene outside Portsmouth Navy Yard in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. And I had never seen anything like it. But there's a shift change. I don't know how many thousands of people come through the gate and General Haig was there with some of his campaign workers and it was like he was a positive magnet and they were a positive magnet and people were just veering away from him. He would go up to approach them and they were walking away. And he literally had to run from one side of the gate to the other side there were two openings trying to find people to shake hands with. And this was one of those moments where he had gone over to the other side and just called out to this worker and just stepped in to reach his..to shake his hand.

ARTHUR GRACE: Again he's a very interesting man. Very forceful, articulate, intelligent. Obviously the kind..the voters didn't consider him Presidential caliber.

ARTHUR GRACE: This is what candidates have to go through and everybody's saying oh that's a bell helmet for bicycle riding. That's a cold weather face mask he has on. Now what are we doing there and where was it. Perry, Iowa. Well it was another photo op. And it was at least 20 below zero and what he was doing was participating in some of the annual Perry frostbite bicycle race where they where they I think bicycle 20 miles and back. And it's an annual event and then they have some kind of meal at the local high school etc. So he was dressed in that garb. He is very athletic. And this is his photo op for the day which none of us particularly appreciated. We were in heated vans and that's the way I like to keep it when it's that cold. But that's what he was doing. Participating in this frostbite race which was just a photo op.

ARTHUR GRACE: This is again in your studio I believe in Des Moines when he was getting ready for a television appearance on C SPAN. And one of the assistants production assistants was helping I think with the the ear piece I don't know if it was a remote or what but helping him into it. And it's that kind of moment again that you know is totally unplanned. Where somebody's hands were behind him and this again is the imagery of hands on the candidate all the time. Fixes, manipulates, always it's hands on somebody doctoring up the candidates. By the way I should add at this point that it's a very important point that none of the photographs in this book are staged or recreated. They are all candid photographs. They weren't told to look at me or move this way or stand still. Everything in this book was photographed exactly as it happened. Candidly.

ARTHUR GRACE: Sometimes they didn't know who I was. Believe it or not. Sometimes they didn't.

ARTHUR GRACE: Right. Right.

ARTHUR GRACE: Oh you found that.

ARTHUR GRACE: Oh I'd almost have to look through the entire book again. That's a very good question. The most difficult physically I ever took was the one of Jesse Jackson on a Leer Jet which we may get to later where I was in the jump seat facing down at the ground as we took off at I don't know how many hundred of miles an hour and you know felt like you were falling to earth. And he was two inches away from me. Literally I mean six inches. You know the physical difficulty in terms of getting a photograph and getting to a place some of the ones up in New Hampshire and just arriving through blizzards and things like that were..caused problems.

ARTHUR GRACE: Absolutely. Yeah they do. Basically if a still photographer comes by..is alone and the Eng crews and the video crews are always in groups even though the one man band started a little bit of having the tape deck in the camera you still have a producer all the time like a producer, assistant, a lighting..and you at least have a camera man, a sound man, a producer on the road if not a correspondent. So there's groups. Always groups coming in and they respond as any person does differently to a group of three or four than you do to an individual coming in in the room.

ARTHUR GRACE: Um hum. Um hum.

ARTHUR GRACE: I have no idea at this point. I really don't. I expect certainly during the campaign I mean that's what one would hope that it allows you to do your job better and gain some access to certain photographs that you want to take. And the way people are obviously they'd rather have Annie Lebivitz come in and shoot their picture than somebody they never heard of because she's a celebrity in her own right. But I don't know. The question of what's going to happen down the road. You know we'll just have to wait and see.

ARTHUR GRACE: Oh definitely, definitely. I mean a photographer does not have the opportunity you know in his career sometimes to really go off with a camera and say what it is he wants to say or she wants to say with a camera. And really Newsweek gave me that latitude and leeway which I'll always be grateful for. I mean it was fantastic. So of course a project like this from start to finish is a rarity and one that I certainly glad I had the opportunity to do.

ARTHUR GRACE: Oh yeah definitely. At that point I mean again Pierre duPonte a fine gentleman, very intelligent, articulate but losing. There's no question when you see the pictures just didn't exactly have the multitudes beating down his door and begging him to run. And to get publicity one day in Manchester he literally walked two blocks through the slush and the muck and the snow from his studio to his headquarters over to Dole's headquarters because that would cause some kind of event to occur. And that's why I took the picture. There he was in front of Dole's headquarters as a sort of publicity ploy.

ARTHUR GRACE: Again it's a self explanatory photograph but it's true. I mean his staff was talking about things that he was going to do and instead of walking into the room and participating for some reason he just stopped outside the door and appeared that he was almost eavesdropping on his..what they were deciding for him to do.

ARTHUR GRACE: A very interesting question. Initially absolutely and in the end no. I've never met any exception to that rule. And then I'll give you a little story. Now Michael Dukkas when we get to his photographs later in March of '87 I went up to Boston and he couldn't have been more friendlier and expansive with me and called me by my first name. I remember I spent the day with him. I took him out to Logan Airport. I mean I just drove in the care with him and he was going down to South Carolina. He was saying all day what a kick it was whether he won or lost he didn't care. It was just terrific. He was having a ball those are his words running for President. And in fact we were waiting there and I said to him do you have frequent flyer programs and are you in it? He didn't even know what a frequent flyer program was. And I said are you going to be going not on charter jets but commercially? And he said that's a great idea and he signed up for all these commercial..these frequent flyer programs. When you cut to a year later was a very different Michael Dukkas that you ran into. Or 16 months later. Very very different.

ARTHUR GRACE: Somber. Tired. Embattled. And I think the magnitude of his undertaking was full upon him let's put it that way.

ARTHUR GRACE: Oh that again a very typical campaign photograph. You are always selling something as a politician. I mean let's face it you're selling ideas you're selling programs. You're selling yourself. And you'll see throughout the book and from time to time that without the candidates seeing it the skeptical look or the quizzical look or the disapproving look of the voter towards the candidate. And that's what that is I think I captured that in that particular photograph.

ARTHUR GRACE: The one next to is what everybody ought to understand. That when you see these candidates on the news railing away this thing and saying what they're going to do for this program and a fist in the air as in this photograph maybe no one's there. Maybe no one's behind him. Maybe it's just a backdrop. And that's why I shot this photograph. He's..there was no one on the street. There was no one on the street. And when as you turn around you see that he is just merely doing all this not for a crowd that's behind him. I mean it's a storefront so there isn't a crowd behind him. Who is he making this fist at? What is he doing this gesture of victory and onward and we'll win? He's only doing it for all the camera people. But it's very typical and very important I think that the public understand a lot of the things they do they're literally quite literally playing to the cameras and you don't see anybody there except camera..

ARTHUR GRACE: Why I don't think anybody's being fooled. I think I think you know the media you know has written about and shown in pieces feature pieces during campaigns what it's like. I mean it's not like they ignore that nobody showed up. Or that it's just a backdrop for ….So I think if people pay attention they may be aware maybe not to that degree like that photograph shows but that there's a lot of staging involved.

ARTHUR GRACE: Um hum.

ARTHUR GRACE: Oh the first one was in his office I guess in April of '87 and he was having a meeting with Hal Brown former Defense Secretary for Jimmy Carter and just going over parts of his program. I think Brown was an informal advisor to his campaign. We were in his house office and I was just sitting in a chair while this discussion was going on and took that photograph while he was listening to Harold Brown.

ARTHUR GRACE: This is what I call you know the dead tired at five shot. It's live at five in Boston or whatever and it's that whole look of being wired up to electronic media getting your free spot on the news and telling it is what you want to tell but looking just waiting to go on for that green light to go on the cameras and he has that zombie expression on his face.

ARTHUR GRACE: Okay this was in a factory in New Hampshire where he was listening to a question from a factory worker and seemed to be either not pleased with the question or impatient with it. And that last photograph was taken after the Fanel Hall Debate in Boston. We had all driven that evening from Boston up to Manchester through a blizzard and everybody decided the reporters and the candidate to go down to Ho Jo's. We were staying at the Ho Jo's. To go down to the Ho Jo's and have a late night cheeseburger or whatever late night meal and this is about 11:30 at night and Mr. Gephardt ordered I don't know a cheeseburger and a milk shake. He knew I was photographing him and this was a photograph I took as he was informally talking to reporters at the table.

ARTHUR GRACE: No he doesn't.

ARTHUR GRACE: Well a lot of candidates have different expressions and you get into the whole business of masks and what without being too intellectual about it or reading the tea leaves. Well people have faces that they put..candidates do. The happy campaigner the smiling candidate the up beat person the forceful person the strong leader face and then they have other faces when the cameras aren't on. And that's one of the things I was able to do I feel in this campaign and with this project was to get behind the campaign face more than usual and to see what they really looked like when the cameras weren't rolling or the voters weren't in front of them. Now if you see four photographs like that I'm not doing it..I don't have a specific idea in mind with Richard Gephardt or a message or anything else that it's for. Now I should add now that when we did this book..first of all when we did this project the idea was not to do a book. I was just going out to get one portrait of each candidate and so in a lot of cases I didn't spend weeks and you know days and weeks with these people in all sorts of situations. I maybe spent one day with them. And because they dropped out I didn't go back and do them again they just became part of the book in that short span where I photographed them. Now these two. This is the two faces of Bob Dole. There's a third face that's on another page. But he can be very witty, very charming and smiling and everybody knows about his sense of humor. In fact the smiling picture's when he dropped out of the race. That was in the Senate Chamber I forget which room but he..that was the moment when he dropped out of the race and that's his daughter to his right. And this was in New Hampshire that very important week when was it no this was earlier. This was just in New Hampshire. It was at a factory for disabled people. And it was a very interesting project. He was waiting to be introduced. And again that look of drifting off just thinking about the future, his campaign what he was doing. It's a look that a lot of these candidates have in their face if you're able to get close enough. Now we have Paul Simon. Again early on I thi..what is that November of '87 and that's in his office. She was watching I think of himself of a commercial for his campaign in his Senate office. And that's the look he had with one of his office staff so he's again being mesmerized by the entire endeavor. In this case looking at a commercial. And this one was amazing. I followed him down to Miami Beach because I had none of the candidates in Palm Trees something that was interesting taking them off the snows in New Hampshire away from the snows in New Hampshire. So I found out that Senator Simon was going to be in Miami. I arranged for the staff to go down there. So we set this up that I would meet him at a..this is contributor's home a campaign contributor very wealthy individual I think outside of Miami maybe in Coconut Grove. And I set the meeting for 11:00 in the morning because I wanted to see him and his wife by the pool there were palm tree. I hoped there would be. I showed up and it was a partly cloudy day but very warm at 11:30 in the morning the house had a beautiful pool in back and lounge chairs and everything and the maid lets me in or somebody..in fact if wasn't a maid I think Mrs. Simon let me in and went to go to the back to the pool and I looked to the left and Senator Simon in like what there is a recreation room bar and you know video games and whatever and just like that like it's 2:00 in the morning with this indirect lighting over the bar with his bickwoodus pepsi cola and there he is on the telephone. What's he doing? He's raising funds. So this is Miami Beach beautiful day hot weather huge swimming pool outside the door and it looks like it's 2:00 in the morning in New York City or Chicago because that's what it takes. The man was absolutely you know committed to his bid for the presidency and this is what it takes. Especially if you don't have you know large coffers with campaign contributions.

ARTHUR GRACE: Jayne Livingston correct.

ARTHUR GRACE: She is the Social Director and Chief Curator at the Corcoran Gallery here in Washington.

ARTHUR GRACE: Oh I just..she is a woman who has great knowledge of of photography internationally in this country today. Contemporary as well as late 19th century and 20th century. But she's one person who has made it..made an effort to follow contemporary photo journalism as well as photography from the past. She's very knowledgeable on the subject.

ARTHUR GRACE: Politically? I never talk about that. Politically?

ARTHUR GRACE: In my mind all I was looking for and I think all the public should be looking for in the future hopefully is leadership versus rhetoric. Somebody who has the ability to lead to motivate people who has some charisma and can get the country generated and motivated to accomplish a goal. So politically that's as far as I go politically. I look for people with leadership potential.

ARTHUR GRACE: No. Not any longer. Absolutely not. There was a time when that could happen. That was before the advent of television. There's no way that you can do that as far as I'm concerned because still photography has no where the audience of the television camera. So it's..we can make small contributions or make..have some effect in a small way but nothing like we used to be able to in the '40's and '50's during Life Magazine for instance.

ARTHUR GRACE: Quite a few times. All the candidates quite a few times. That early shot of Bruce Babbitt and now this. And again this is the imagery and the symbolism of these kinds of shots have to do with the future. This book as far as I'm concerned is a historical document that 100 years from now people can pick up and go what's he doing there? I mean what's that telephone what's that coming out of his ear? Because this is the age that we live in now it's called satellite feeds and reaching a wide audience on television. And most of the time they're sitting in an empty room a studio room kind of like this one and talking to nobody. I mean no one's there. They just hear these voices through their ear and they are pitching their rhetoric and their campaign slogans or whatever to hundreds of thousands of people. And this is a new way of campaigning that we're going to see more and more of. The satellite feeds to local.

ARTHUR GRACE: That was the again when he dropped out. Dropped out of the race. It may have been the same Senate Chamber as..where Senator Dole probably is and at that particular moment somebody asked a really strange question. And his entire family like on cue it's kind of like when a dog hears a whistle a high pitched whistle and the head cocks like that the whole family just went over like that. And actually I know Tipper and she mentioned that they saw this picture and couldn't quite remember what they were doing at the time or why..why they were all leaning that way.

ARTHUR GRACE: Fit here in terms of content?

ARTHUR GRACE: Absolutely. Absolutely. There's just no space.

ARTHUR GRACE: Oh no no.

ARTHUR GRACE: No there's no space. They want to get to the issue. Okay in other words we point to anything Jack Kemp he was on the street there. Okay in wherever..Dover, New Hampshire. If you're working for the wire service they want to show him you know walking down the street shaking hands with voters. They're not interested with him playing to the crowd. That's something for a feature story later. That's something that's that has no place in the newspaper for that day's news. So certainly a news magazine can take the time and a week later run a picture like that to make a point on a side bar story. But the newspapers..you know they run great photography in newspapers. Obviously the wire service or the wire photographers are the finest working in the country today. And they take great photographs. But they're pretty direct and they make a point. You don't have five pictures to make a story. They're making a point. And on a book like this or in a news magazine you can pull something out and say look at this. This is what's going on. And this is what we have to say about it. And certainly in a book that's..you just have a field day in terms of pulling out those photographs that make a point for you.

ARTHUR GRACE: Oh sure yeah.

ARTHUR GRACE: Oh yeah. Um hum.

ARTHUR GRACE: I don't have any idea. Senate press photographers there could tell you but there had to have been a hundred, a hundred twenty cameras going at that time. An incredible amount. The cafanee was incredible. It sounded like a battle was going on.

ARTHUR GRACE: 120 size roll of film.

ARTHUR GRACE: Oh no.

ARTHUR GRACE: No. No. No. Absolutely not. The..in the hands of a good photographer and like I said live photographers, news magazine photographers many newspaper photographers they know what they're doing with that camera. The reason they invented motor drives is because it gives you a certain advantage where you don't have to take the camera away from your eye and you can follow the action. I mean it's a technological improvement in many ways. And what happens in the hands of good photographer they'll take a better much better photograph than I will with a roloflex. That's why it came into being. But when it gets abused and people are just keeping their hands on the button and not..and saying well the action starting and I think I'll shoot the whole thing and I'm not sure what I want to shoot then it's a disadvantage. And you can't do that with a roloflex. You have to wait and wait for your frame and take the picture.

ARTHUR GRACE: Well tough..yes definitely. Toughest because all right in the picture on the left we are at the Hanover Inn at Dartmouth. He had given a lecture that..the night before. I came into his room during breakfast. I just..what I requested of all the candidates and their staff or press secretaries I said I just want access. I just want time to spend with them. I don't know what I'm going to shoot. I'm not coming in with scene lists and lights. So they let me in for breakfast. Well every time I put the camera up to my eye he'd smile. And then I put the camera down and he'd go back to eating breakfast. Then I'd wait a minute. I pick the camera up and it's a piece of toast so he literally in mid bite with the toast and he saw that I had the camera up and started smiling at me again. I mean it was uncanny. Anyway that's what happened. He's having his breakfast a piece of toast sees I'm about to take the picture and the smile comes to his face.

ARTHUR GRACE: What that he's smiling all the time?

ARTHUR GRACE: Oh absolutely. Absolutely. I'm not going to say they're going to change the whole complexion of the election but absolutely it can have a great impact how a candidate is perceived.

ARTHUR GRACE: Fantas..he's excellent to work with. Again he's like Bruce Babbitt. He has..he has a huge ego but not when it comes to being photographed. He really forgets that the camera is there and as long you get the access and that could be a problem with Rev. Jackson getting the access to be there but once you're there he gives you no problem whatsoever. He has great respect for still photographers and doesn't interfere with your work in the slightest. Again these photographs are there for a very obvious reason. Jesse Jackson made huge inroads amongst the white voters in '88. That's the real story of the campaign. One of the stories of the campaign. And you would see this which you'd never see four years ago or eight years ago. And if you look at the faces of the people in that crowd it's like they're greeting a rock star or something. I mean there is genuine enthusiasm and emotion. And that is a very important picture. I mean not the photograph itself but that what happened with the white voters. And again this is a picture you'd never see on the right. He gave..had a huge rally at a farm in Wisconsin upstate Wisconsin Amery and thousands of people came from all over white farmers to see Jesse Jackson. This is him posing with the farmer's family whose dairy farm it was. Again something that you really wouldn't see four years before or earlier.

ARTHUR GRACE: Interesting. I wouldn't change anything. I mean it's one of those projects that just had a magical quality about it. It just everything seemed to fall into place. Everything seemed to work. And I wouldn't know how to do it differently to do it better. I just think it's something that was done and was very unusual happening and that's it. I couldn't recreate it I'm sure of that and I don't intend to do it in '92.

ARTHUR GRACE: Lloyd Bentsen's a real gentleman. Intelligent, soft spoken man and somebody who's very very kind to other people. He treated me very well and I think he was..you know had a rough road to hoe the entire way because right after the convention they started slipping in the polls and he had to kind of shore up their defenses.

ARTHUR GRACE: That's his wife. His wife was holding on to him right before he went on stage. I'm sorry I forget her name it's B.J. or something like that. Anyway Mrs. Bentsen. She is a wonderful lady very friendly very very charming very nice to me and she was just playing around with him right before he went on stage at wherever the University of Arkansas and all of a sudden it was that moment where again it's that image I kept seeing over and over which was hands on and we'll get to that with Dan Quayle in a little bit. Of just peoples hands on the candidates for whatever reason. Reassurance, direction but you see it time and time again. And this is the typical you know the candidate arrives a plane pulls up the big wave and I'm here and that's just part of the campaign is the wave. Everybody had their own style with the wave.

ARTHUR GRACE: I think at this point in a campaign it's being able to work. It's access. I mean let's say they let you into a place then they don't let you work. They put you in a pen. They..you have to go into the back of the room. You have to go on this side of the room. You're always contending with the Secret Service Agents the candidates own staff. It's freedom to work is the most difficult problem right now. Movement freedom of movement.

ARTHUR GRACE: At the time I was covering him? Yes. I didn't think..early on I mean after the conventions I didn't think that the democrats would pull it out so I had very strong feeling that he Vice President Quayle now Vice President Quayle would be where he is today.

ARTHUR GRACE: I think it's very accurate depiction of what happened that day. Of what it was. He was a very very uncomfortable campaigner at that point. That was right after the Bentsen Quayle debate in Omaha. The next day or the day after and the press and the media had given the debate to Bentsen and Senator Quayle was taking some hard knocks. So he just didn't..he was very tentative on the days I was out with him.

ARTHUR GRACE: Again right after and I can't change Gerry Ford's expression in that picture. I mean that's the way it is. He was speaking at a fund raiser and the reason the photograph's there is again using the flag as a back drop the theme of the disembodied head behind behind podiums which we see all the time just somebody's head there. Where's the body. The body may be in another room I don't know. But it's like..that's what you see over and over again this head at a microphone. And then the way former President Ford reacted to him. Which I can't change. The other one again is obvious. With what happened with him. Even it hadn't said warrior on the jersey I would have liked the photograph. I hate taking photographs that words make the photograph. I just would have liked it because of expression on his face and the hands clapping off..out of the frame. I like it but add warrior after what happened to him in terms of the National Guard Service etc. and that made the picture.

ARTHUR GRACE: Oh definitely. Definitely. I think any good photographer.. in an action situation you don't. You say well I hope I got it. Obviously in tragic situations like when Ronald Reagan..you know the assassination attempt here in town a lot of my friends were there..colleagues, photographers. They don't know. It just happened so fast. In a sense..in a case with Senator Quayle there I knew I had the picture. I mean that you're sure of.

ARTHUR GRACE: Now we're back to Michael Dukkas. And this again is that pensive moment the one on the left the pensive moment when the candidate is on the road and listening to his advisors or local political persons who are behind his campaign and whatever and he just..it's a long day and he's hearing things for the umpteenth time and it's just the weight of the campaign seems to show in his face and I just like that as a portrait. And the other photograph was in Iowa when Dukkas you know felt a surge. It was the next morning after I forget he came in this is where my political head is at today I forgot what he came in in Iowa.

ARTHUR GRACE: It was third? Well it was a strong showing or he felt he'd done well and this was a breakfast rally the next morning and again that whole thing of being held up as almost a statue and icon and his adoring wife you know Kitty's a great lady looking up at him. Just the graphics of it and the moment of it worked for that time in the campaign. That's what it was it was a rally..breakfast rally the morning after the Iowa caucuses.

ARTHUR GRACE: I think so.

ARTHUR GRACE: That was one of the reasons. He didn't talk to me very much towards the end of the campaign and in the beginning he talked to me quite a bit. And you see that quite a bit with politicians sometimes as the stress increases people who come up to you and say hello and want to talk later on just ignore you're in the room. They just don't even say hello or ignore your existence..I mean acknowledge your existence. Again here we go again on the left hand side we showing the woman at the counter. Okay. They were both in Iowa. This is the night before the Iowa caucuses and again for the zillionth time doing an interview a radio interview. And they're ….campaigning since 5:00 am that morning and that's it. It tells the story really of what it does to individuals, couples, whatever who are running for President. The gruelling hours. The talk show again. The local Radio show. And they are exhausted I'm sure and would just rather be in bed asleep. And this was early in the evening on a long long campaign day at a local radio station.

ARTHUR GRACE: Again this is a theme that I talked about earlier with who was it that was looking..oh Jack Kemp with the elderly woman looking up at him. He's at a diner in Chicago, Illinois on the beginning of a long campaign day of flying around the state. We're in Chicago and he sits down at a local I think it was a greek coffee shop and you get this moment with this woman who's just come in for a cup of coffee and look at her eyes. Is she buying the act or not. What is she saying. I can see him as President or I can't. But the voters scrutinize these candidates especially when you're up that close.

ARTHUR GRACE: Um hum.

ARTHUR GRACE: Oh very well. I mean I'll say that honestly. I had gone out with the Vice President early on. I think the dates there we'll have to check but maybe March of '87 and I flew on Air Force II with him and I had total access and I was able to photograph him preparing his speeches and taking a rest during the day and later when I came back what happens is just a lot more red tape you have to deal with. And by that I mean permissions from everybody in the campaign from the Assistant Press Secretary the Press Secretary the Campaign Manager to get access. Not to go on the campaign. Anybody with a valid press credential can do that but to gain access to the candidate and do behind the scenes work you need permission and that becomes much more difficult as the campaign progresses. Right there we..

ARTHUR GRACE: On the right? We're looking at..again this was early on April of '87 and the group of microphones once again everything is over and over again. The microphone the tape recorder being literally shoved in the candidates face and that's an expression that Bush gets on his face from time to time. People who know him think it's very typical that kind of..oh here we go again kind of bemused look he has. And I always liked that picture because it captured that that expression.

ARTHUR GRACE: Which..exactly you mean..

ARTHUR GRACE: Oh no no no no. Unless they make them go back to pad and pencil which a lot of us wish they would but I'm afraid that day's long gone.

ARTHUR GRACE: A lot. A lot. He's..President's a human being. A President at that point was the Vice President and a candidate for the Presidency. He looks no different than Bruce Babbitt did early and some of these others..and Michael Dukkas at the radio station. Exhaustion. This is a gruelling gruelling process for these people. And for the press who go along. I mean it's just from morning till late at night and you do..saying the same thing over and over and over again and he'd been going for maybe six or seven hours and we'd been to five cities in South Carolina and it was a very congested community center and the air conditioning wasn't on and he's got the late afternoon blahs. I mean you just sit there and wonder you know is it worth it? We rather be somewhere else fishing. I don't know but it's a very typical expression and mood that's evoked by the candidates throughout.

ARTHUR GRACE: I hope we find out. Photographers fall into two camps obviously and a lot of people love color photography photographers. I think what bothers all photographers is that color has come on to the exclusion of black and white. That black and white is almost now considered inferior or it is equated with being cheaper. You know you can't spend the money to do color so you did it in black and white. And that's not the case at all. They're both valid and they both have a place in photo journalism. On the right..

ARTHUR GRACE: On the left. You know this is Steve Studderd who I believe is leaving the White House or just left who did his on site planning. I don't know what his official title was. He traveled with the President and he would go out ahead of time and every event make sure the lights were right and the and the signs and the balloons and everything was perfect. And at this point he's doing a live feed interview and Studdard's just timing it on his watch and the President spies me obviously out of the corner of his eye and again there's the tension, the gruelling aspect of the campaign on his face and kind of wondering what I'm doing there also probably. It was a very small room.

ARTHUR GRACE: On the other one was taken I think the same..yes it was the same day it was the same day no a day earlier. But had given again up early given a long speech and they have these what do I want to call them hospitality rooms private rooms whatever where the candidate can go and get away from it and certainly for the Vice President that's why the black curtain's there for security reasons and he just sat down slumped in a chair. He was talking to another gentleman that's out of the frame and you can see by his body language he's very very tired and with another half a day to go and hasn't touched the fruit and the cold cuts whatever else is on the table.

ARTHUR GRACE: Oh it depends what it depends what you know the story is. It's certainly very difficult..you have to be honest it..to go back and do politics go back to do the White House which I have done I was just on the Bush trip to Hungry, Poland and France last month in June and July and it's so difficult to be put behind the ropes again and you know be led around by the nose literally to this place and that place and there's no access and you don't see anything and you're always kept restricted. So I find it difficult. Certainly if you've experienced this of being able to kind of bob and weave and move behind the scenes and get a little bit of access then to go back and be herded around is I think quite difficult in politics.

ARTHUR GRACE: Love to hear you say that.

ARTHUR GRACE: Thanks for having me here.