© Jose Manuel Serrano EsparzaLegendary picture editor John G. Morris has received today May 10, 2010 the ICP Lifetime Achievement Award, one of the most important photographic prizes in the world, during the ICP´s 26th Annual Infinity Awards Gala held at Pier Sixty Event Space located on the back end of Chelsea Piers, with water views to the Hudson River in Manhattan, New York, with an attendance of more than 600 guests and Willis Hartshorn, director of the International Center of Photography, hosting the event.
Also present at the ceremony were Harper´s Bazaar editor in chief Glenda Bailey, photo editors Chris Dougherty, Aidan Sullivan and Michele McNally, fashion designer Kalvin Klein, Dennis Wolff (Aperture Book Editor), gallerist L. Parker Stephenson, Peter Galassi ( Curator of New York Museum of Modern Art), Infinity Award co-chair Jed Root, Thelma Golden (Curator of the Harlem Studio Museum), photographers Nigel Parry, Mark Seliger, Craig McDean and Mary Allan Mark, Christiane Amanpour (ABC´s show host), book publisher Darius Himes, writer Ingrid Sischy, Ann Curry (NBC Today Show Host) , Stefano Tonchi (editor of W), Lynn Hirschberg (for many years editor at large of the New York Times Magazine and presently editor-at-large of W), etc.
On accepting his award, John G. Morris made an emotive speech in which he paid homage both to the editors with whom he collaborated through his lifetime and specially to the thousands of photographers he met and worked with, proclaiming that he thinks of them as his real children.
© Jose Manuel Serrano EsparzaJohn G. Morris, born in 1916, is considered the most influential picture editor in history and probably the greatest pundit of all time on photographic images along with Wilson Hicks and Jimmy Fox, having developed a very long standing and fascinating career as a photojournalist, which began in 1938 when he worked for Life magazine as a correspondent in Hollywood.
Subsequently, through a span of approximately 70 years of professional activity between 1940 and currently, John G. Morris was Life magazine picture editor during II World War, Ladies Home Journal photo editor, Magnum Photos first picture editor, assistant manager editor for The Washington Post, picture editor of The New York Times, corresponding editor for National Geographic, etc.
© Jose Manuel Serrano EsparzaThroughout all these decades, John G. Morris was vast majority of times beloved not only by the most powerful owners, general managers and directors of world class media corporations, whose newspapers and magazines he greatly fostered with his amazing mastery in the selection of the best pictures and the improvement of the photographic departments, but specially by professional photographers, whom he always considered job teammates, stubbornly defending them and steadily striving after getting the best working conditions, salaries and picture payings for their images, sometimes even facing the most prominent publishers in defense of their rights.
© Jose Manuel Serrano EsparzaA high percentage of the most famous images in history, made by the most important photographers of all time, were edited by John G. Morris, something which featured a key significance, because the best feasible selection of the most representative pictures as a keynote was fundamental for the impact, conveyance of different important messages and the successful selling of the publications he worked for.
© Jose Manuel Serrano EsparzaJohn G. Morris had always the highly important task of choosing their best images for publication in a number of the most renowned magazines and newspapers on earth, a high percentage of them becoming legendary icons with the elapse of time. And he always managed to increase the photographic picture edition and prestige of all the world class media for which he worked, also becoming a key factor in the increase of sales.
Therefore, John G. Morris was highly instrumental in the careers of: Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Alfred Eisenstaedt Margaret Bourke-White, David Seymour Chim, Werner Bischof, Gjon Mili, George Rodger, Bob Landry, Ralph Morse, Carl Mydans Elliot Elisofon, Hansel Mieth, Elliot Erwitt, Phillippe Halsman, Eugene Smith, Cornell Capa, Inge Morath, Dmitri Kessel, David Douglas Duncan, Fritz Goro, Myron Davies, George Silk, Peter Stackpole, John Florea, Hans Wild, Frank Scherschel, Dave Scherman, Ernst Haas, Lee Miller, Bill Vandivert, Ruth Orkin, Sol Libsohn, Esther Bubbley, Gordon Coster, Larry Burrows, Eve Arnold, Burt Glinn, Erich Hartmann, Dennis Stock, John Phillips, Erich Lessing, Marc Riboud, Kryn Taconis, Bill Snead, Ernies Sisto, Barton Silverman, Neal Boenzi, Edward Hausner, Jack Manning, Don Hogan Charles, Peter Magubane, Michel Laurent, David Turnley, Peter Turnley and many more.
© Jose Manuel Serrano EsparzaJohn G. Morris, a full-fledged living encyclopedia perfectly remembering all kind of anecdotes, data and events from thirties to present time, had previously won a lot of top international awards like the 1971 Joseph A. Sprague Memorial Award of the National Press Association, the Erich Salomon Prize of the German Society of Photography in 2003, the French Legion d´honneur in 2009 (this is France´s highest and most coveted award), without forgetting that his extraordinary book Get the Picture: A Personal History of Photojournalism (Random House 1988 and University of Chicago Press, 2002) received the ICP Infinity Award for Writing in 1999, and has also been an editor of Time Life books and a special consultant to the Museum of Modern Art. He´s likewise NPPA Life Member.
Past winners of the ICP top awards in different categories have included Robert Frank, Mary Ellen Mark, Marc Riboud, André Kertész, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Berenice Abbott, Richard Avedon, Harold Evans, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Alexander Liberman, Gordon Parks, Helen Levitt, Annie Leibovitz, Lee Friedlander, William Klein, Susan Meiselas, Roy de Carava, Malick Sidibé, and Karl Lagerfeld.
This year 2010, along with John G Morris (ICP Lifetime Achievement) , other winners of the 26th Annual ICP Infinity Awards are Peter Magubane (Cornell Capa Award), Gilbert C. Maure of Hearst corporation (ICP Trustees Award), Raphael Dallaporta (Young Photographer Award), Luc Sante (Writing Award for his book Folk Photography: The real Photo Postcard), National gallery of Art expert Sarah Greenough (Publication Award for his book Looking in: Robert Frank´s The Americans), Lorna Simpson (Art Photography Award), Reza (Photojournalism Award) and Daniele Tamagni (Applied Fashion Advertising Award for his book Gentlemen of Bacongo).
The Lifetime Achievement award and Cornell Capa Award honourees are selected by the ICP board of trustees, president's council, and senior staff. The Trustees award is periodically given by the board for outstanding contributions to the field. The 2010 selection committee comprised publisher Chris Boot, Carol McCusker (Curator at the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego), and Peter MacGill (owner of the Pace/MacGill Gallery in New York).
© Jose Manuel Serrano EsparzaA personal great friend of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, David Seymour Chim, George Rodger, Cornell Capa and many more, this is the man who handled the negatives of D-Day made by Robert Capa on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1945, under circumstances of the highest conceivable stress and finally managing to save eleven 35 mm frames with distinct images after the young Dennis Banks (because of the unbearable fidgets and huge importance of the development of the four rolls of 35 mm film -shot with a Contax II and a Carl Zeiss Jena 50 mm f/1.5 lens- and six 120 rolls of medium format 6 x 6 cm -shot with a TLR Rolleiflex-) had hung the films inside the darkroom in the wooden locker that served as a drying cabinet, heated by a coil on the floor, and on hurrying up to have the contacts as soon as possible, had forgotten to close the door, so the emulsions had melted because of lack of ventilation, though the aforementioned 11 frames of the fourth 35 mm roll could be preserved and quickly sent to the central headquarters of Life in New York, where Henry Luce, Wilson Hicks, Daniel Longwell and John Shaw Billings were eagerly waiting for them. Therefore, this photographic mission, one of the most important in the history of photojournalism, could be succesfully implemented and the grainy but impressive images finally made the inner pages of Life June 19, 1944, depicting live and with great realism the landing of American soldiers on the Normandy beaches amid enemy fire.
© Jose Manuel Serrano EsparzaThis is the man who along with Cornell Capa, Julia Friedmann, and Edith Capa helped bury Robert Capa on June 11, 1954 in the Quaker cemetery at Amawalk, New York, in the middle of very deep grief.
© Jose Manuel Serrano EsparzaThis is the man who edited the famous picture taken by Eddie Addams of AP showing the summary execution of Nguyen Van Lem by General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, chief of South Vietnam national police, on February 1, 1968, who finally made the front page of the New York Times of February 2, 1968, occuping approximately a 25% of it on its top right half.
© Jose Manuel Serrano EsparzaThis is the man who edited the Moon pictures taken by Armstrong, Collins and Aldrin after the arrival of the three Apollo 11 astronauts to Houston Johnson National Aeronautics and Space Administration on July 27, 1969, carrying out another of the most important photojournalistic operations in history, under the global command of New York Times Managing Editor Abe Rosenthal, with John G. Morris as picture editor, Hank Lieberman as scientific news coordinator and George Cowan as art director, all of them inside the New York Times Dassault Falcon 20 jet, flying from Houston to New York and taking a lot of high quality dupes and 8 x 10 prints made from the original Kodak Ektachrome 160 ASA 70 mm transparencies shot with Hasselblad cameras on the Moon surface, which edited by John G. Morris (some NASA photographic technicians under the command of Richard Underwood had given them to him near the Lunar Receiving Laboratory just after they were developed) allowed Abe Rosenthal´s dream to come true: the color first ever for The New York Times in the form of a special newsmagazine supplement inside August 3, 1969 paper.
© Jose Manuel Serrano EsparzaThis is the man who made twelve trips to Tucson (Arizona) to see W.S. "Bill" Johnson, Eugene Smith´s personal curator, fighting to his physical limit trying to preserve - what he obtained - the economical future of Eugene Smith´s sons, specially three of them who had become very poor after Gene´s demise in 1978.
© Jose Manuel Serrano EsparzaThere would be many more examples clearly depicting the exceptional humanity of John G. Morris, who often jeopardized his own job defending photographers all over the world and the huge significance of pictures in modern photojournalism and different media related to it.
© Jose Manuel Serrano EsparzaCopyright Text and Photos: Jose Manuel Serrano Esparza. LHSA
