Section 1:
Q: Today is April 14, Saturday, 2001.
Okay, Joan, we'll just start out with some
basics and like I say, the whole idea is to
jog your memory so that perhaps we can hear
some anecdotes or interesting things that
happened to you that you remember personally.
First of all, when did you first decide you
wanted to become a journalist? What was it
that provoked - what motivated you or who was
it that helped you get on the road to doing
this?
A: I had a summer job at age fifteen at
Henry Lewis' camera store in Iowa City and I
discovered graven images. And I was
absolutely intrigued with the fact that you
could take a picture and process it and out
of this plain piece of paper, up popped an
image. I knew that that was going to be my
medium for the rest of my life.
Q: When was it that you found that out?
A: It was 1945 - no, it was 1944. I was
fifteen. I had known always that I would do
something visually in the arts but up to that
point, did not know exactly what.
Q: What were you doing at Henry Lewis'
then?
A: I was in film processing and print
making and the soda fountain and selling
cameras. It was an exciting experience.
Q: And from there you ended up at the
University of Iowa?
A: I went to St. Catherine's School in
Davenport and took a number of pictures there
that wound up in their yearbook. Then I
entered the university because I really
wanted to take photography and it was in the
journalism school.
Q: Can you think back and recall what some
of the ideas that you've had in mind for your
future? What you wanted to do with this
passion for photography?
A: I wanted to travel the entire world and
document people and what they were doing and
explore. I suppose at heart I was a National
Geographic photographer, but I also wanted to
have a family and children and live a normal
life. I had come out of a single parent,
rather disruptive background of being
shuffled around to various relatives and, of
course, it was during the depression and I
wanted to be independent and travel. Of
course, I've been very lucky to be in Johnson
and Loon counties, which have been
interesting to me and I hardly ever get out
of Johnson and Loon counties.
Q: Did you see that there might have been
a conflict between your work as a
photographer and your desire to have a
family?
A: Yes, I certainly did and I asked
Margaret Burke-White when I carried her
camera equipment, about those choices and she
said, "Life decides that for you." Now,
whether she meant LIFE in capital letters and
Henry Luce or whether she meant just
accidental life, I don't know.
Q: This was when White came to the
University of Iowa more than fifty years ago.
Do you remember anything more about that
visit and how she made [interrupted]
A: Well, she arrived as a big, big
celebrity and everyone just did everything
they could to help her. And of course, she
strung umpteen floodlights and had all this
gear to carry and I thought I was terribly
privileged to be able to carry her camera
case. [chuckles].
Q: Do you remember anything else that the
two of you talked about?
A: No, because that was my only
opportunity to ask her for my own conflict
resolution. And of course, that was the
answer I got, that life decides it for you.
Q: Have you found that to be true or not?
A: Yes, I think it's probably true, except
that I've never allowed anything to get in
the way of my ultimate visions. Would you
like to meet my husband, Duane?
Q: Yes.
A: Duane, this is Brian Thomas.
Q: We've got the camera rolling here.
[inaudible]. Nice to meet you, Mr. Bourret.
Duane: [inaudible in background]
A: It is pronounced Bo-ray. It is French.
Q: Then how was it that you didn't finish
your work at the University of Iowa?
A: The Gazette, I was a stringer for the
Gazette. The Gazette thought that I was
graduating and offered me a permanent job and
I was so thrilled that somebody wanted me
that I decided not to go to Alaska that
summer but to take the position of a
photographer and feature writer at the
Gazette. And of course, I got married that
summer, too, to a journalism graduate, who
was also working at the Gazette.
Q: And that was Art?
A: Hubenfeld.
Q: How did you meet?
A: I met him because of Henry Lewis'
camera store. His sister worked there and
she said he was coming home from Europe, from
the Army.
Q: When you were at the University, were
you majoring in media studies or journalism?
A: I was majoring in journalism and I was
also taking an enormous number of art
classes. You see, they had no major where
you could be simply in the school of art and
art history at that time, and involving
photography. And my passion was photography.
Q: Did art help you along the way of your
photography career as it developed? I'm
thinking maybe the same principles of
composition and balance.
A: No, he [Art Hubenfeld] had absolutely
nothing to do with the imagery. He did have
quite a bit to do, however, with the
development of a story line for a series of
children's books that were lavishly
illustrated with black and white photographs.
Q: My question wasn't about Art, the man.
My question was about art, the subject
matter?
A: No, he had absolutely nothing to do
with aesthetics.
Q: Okay. You don't see the two,
photography and art, coming together?
A: Are you talking about my husband?
Q: No, I'm talking about the subject of
art.
A: Yes, of course, of course. It's
absolutely essential.
Q: I guess I got off on the wrong foot.
A: No, we got a little mixed up on those
two things.
Q: So tell me how art has helped your
photography career. Art, the subject matter
in the department there at the University of
Iowa.
A: Well, in a way, you are competing with
any image that has ever been done and
developed, whatever medium it is. Or maybe
competing isn't the word, but mankind has,
ever since the cave paintings in southern
Europe in trying to depict experiences and I
just thought it was wonderful to learn what
had gone before.
Q: Was it art history or was it -
A: I took both. I took life drawing and
James will say it was a professor of painting
and drawing in that stance, was just
wonderful to me, and we soon decided that I
had absolutely no talent for drawing the
human form with a pencil or chalk. And Jim
would say, "Well, why don't you take this
time and just go out and make some nice
photographs because that is what you do
best." And he gave me an "A" in the course,
for which I was very grateful regarding grade
points. And he encouraged me. --
Section 2:
Q: Then this turns into my next question.
What does make great photography? A great
photographer and great photography itself?
Thinking in terms of the artistic element of
it.
A: I think it's integral in a sense with
the subject matter of it, because if it's too
abstract, it really doesn't have any
relationship to the human experience. I
wanted my pictures to be able to communicate
to people and to explore what the human
condition is, what was happening to people,
although currently I've been doing a great
deal of work with nature and I suppose, in a
sense, you would say it was ecology-related.
I've been spending about twelve years
documenting various aspects of Pike's Peak
State Park. But in a sense, it could be any
park, anywhere.
Q: Give me an example of how your
photography represents the human experience.
A: I think perhaps one of my most
significant photographs is that of the little
black girl, looking through the white
curtain, which is blocking half of her face.
In a way, that is every minority child's
experience in America, in this part of our
era, the twentieth century and perhaps the
first part of the twenty-first century. It
shows what minority children have to cope
with. Of course, pretty soon, we who are
white are going to be the minority. There is
a bullet hole in the window. I posed the
child. I was on my way to photograph a very
elegant affair in Cedar Rapids and I happened
to stop by to see my housekeeper and drop
something off and it suddenly struck me the
incredible contrast between how she lived
with her child and the Junior Leaguers that I
was off to photograph at a very elegant
event. So I did this picture, which sat
around a long time with no publication aspect
available for it. And of course, since it
was taken, in - I think it was 1958 - in the
last thirty years, it has been published
quite a bit.
Q: Did it end up in any local papers or
any Iowa papers?
A: It wound up, first of all, being
published in the Iowan magazine when we did a
feature, which I suggested, on the status of
the Negro in Iowa. Usually, the publisher of
the magazine, David Archie, was only
interested basically in photographing nature
and the homes and activities of wealthy
Iowans.
Q: This would have been back in the early
fifties?
A: Right. Well, no. The picture was
taken in 1958 so it would be in the late
fifties, early sixties. And I went to
Waterloo and stayed with some black people
there and photographed that community and
used this picture as one of them illustrating
the feature. That was probably the first
comprehensive coverage for a white audience
of blacks in the state of Iowa. David, who
had great misgivings about it, wound up being
terribly pleased that we had done it, because
friends of his who were on the faculty at
Iowa State University, praised him for
running this feature. I would say that was
the only socially significant documentary
that ever appeared in the Iowan magazine in
all these years.
Q: Did you get any feedback about it?
From readers?
A: Not particularly.
Q: Was there anything negative said about
it?
A: No. It was a straightforward
documentary and some of the photographs that
were taken for that series are now in my
Traveling Retrospective of the State
Historical Society, particularly one of a
neighborhood in Waterloo with dirt streets.
There were 10,000 black people living in
Waterloo at that time.
Q: What other photos have you taken that
you think represent the human experience, as
you described it?
A: I did a series - I read in the Register
that there were going to be migrant workers
in Muscatine, Iowa, to help harvest tomatoes
and I thought that would make kind of an
interesting documentary for the Picture
Magazine at the Register, so I asked Cal
Gartner if he'd like it and he said, sure he
would. So, I went to Muscatine and it was
the only time in all these years that I had
camera failure. My Hasselblad sounded right.
It clicked and you could hear all the noise
of it, but I got home and developed the film
and it was totally blank. What had happened
was, the focal plane shutter hadn't released.
It had a defect in the camera. So anyway, I
had, for many years, had all cameras in
duplicate, if not triplicate. So I went back
and got the unescorted tour. Then I found
absolutely incredible living conditions on
Iowa farms for these people. One was, there
were fifteen people living in a machine shed
and one was a mother with a new baby, maybe
six weeks old baby. I photographed her and
the Register ran the series on the conditions
and the workers and the people and their
children, and the following year, a great
deal was done in Muscatine to provide housing
for these people and change social conditions
for them. I think that's the best use is to
be made of documentaries photography, whether
it's video today, on Sixty Minutes or it was
stills in my era.
Q: These changes came about as a result of
your expos?
A: I think so. I mean, they contributed
to it. Of course, there were people that
were concerned about conditions.
Q: I assume this was back in the fifties,
too.
A: This would be the late fifties, early
sixties. --
Section 3:
Q: You worked for the Register.
A: Yes, but my relationship with the
Register wasn't just somebody on the street
with a camera, throwing something in the mail
to send to them. There was a cooperative
feedback back and forth. I was more or less
guaranteed my pictures would be used, I would
be paid very nicely for them and I had all
the benefits of being an employee without
them paying insurance and other health
insurance, retirement and all that.
Q: And without your having to work 8-5 in
the news room.
A: Right. Which didn't work very well for
me. Even when I was at the Gazette, I made
an arrangement ultimately, with Pete Hoyt,
the managing editor, that my hours would be
different than those of other employees.
They would begin like at 10:00 in the morning
and I would get the hours in, but might lap
over, way into the evening.
Q: Under that situation, how were the
assignments given? Were you asked for story
ideas?
A: Pretty much. I was given stuff to go
photograph, like ladies' social events, but I
also helped cover the Benechek murder trial.
I did hard news, too.
Q: Give us some background. I'm not sure
we know what the murder trial was about.
A: The Benechek murder trial was a very
famous case and I can't remember whether it
was '48 or '49. A college student in Iowa
City accidentally killed a girl named G. G.
Jackson. He was of Czech descent, from a
poor southwest side family, relatively
speaking, compared to G. G. Jackson, who was
the daughter of an affluent Burlington lawyer
and his wife.
Q: What were you photographing when you
photographed that?
A: I was photographing Mr. Benechek going
in and out of the courthouse. The Johnson
County coroner didn't like it and tried to
grab me and my camera.
Q: So, what kind of story ideas did you
come up with yourself that they approved of?
Were you ever rejected? Did you come up with
things that they'd rather not pursue?
A: I did a piece for "Teen Talk" for the
Gazette, which was a column that I had to
produce something for every week, that was on
an assignment. I did it on an outstanding
black teenager. It ran. And Jack Elane
(??), the city editor, came sailing over to
my desk and said, pointing at it and shaking,
"Don't you ever do anything like this again
in 'our' paper!" Why an employee would feel
such a proprietary interest that it would be
"our" paper, is beyond me, as I analyze stock
options and newspapers merging and all. We
had a professor at the University named Art
Wymer who came into the school of journalism,
having been, I think, on the Washington Post
or some kind of Washington news bureau, who
kept trying to explain to the idealist
student body, that newspapers were like
manufacturers of washing machines. And it
was all about a lying situation. So when Mr.
Illion said "our" paper, I thought, well, you
know, this is a long ownership route from
what Art Wymer was talking about.
Q: You're touching on some subject matter
that I wanted to talk about later. And it
may be evident to some, but is the role of a
newspaper? It is a business. It does have a
bottom line. What should it be otherwise?
A: I think it should provide reporting
social services in the sense that if there is
corruption in government, there is one agency
that can expose it. I think that
idealistically, it is far more than the
advertising department holding the pages
apart.
Q: But it is another kind of business that
has to meet their payroll.
A: That's true.
Q: Is there something different about this
kind of a business than there is, say, for
Proctor and Gamble?
A: Yes, I think so. I think there is the
communication aspect of social service in
trying to make social change in a democracy.
I think that the press and TV news has a real
role to serve and now, the internet. Because
tyrants can't keep the news from the people
with the internet. And the people, given a
choice, are going to want freedom of
information and democracy. The Western
press, aside from the tabloid junk
publications, which, of course, they have the
right to do, but the press has a role. Don't
you think so?
Q: I'm not the subject matter here.
[laughter] I would ask, would you say the
press has a duty?
A: Yes. I think that they do have an
almost sacred duty to do this. And also to
be truthful and not to manipulate the news
and not to manipulate photographs. Of the
500,000 plus negatives that I have donated to
the State Historical Society, I have
stipulated that those images are not to be
altered mechanically, so it will say, 'we
have the head of former senator Culver on the
body of a nude.' I mean, it's just
unacceptable. I want my images that I shot
to be straightforward and show the concept
that I had in making them to begin with.
Q: I'm wondering if that publication,
citing the example that you gave, would say
in response, this would generate sales and
it's more attractive. It will sell more
publications.
A: I don't know that that's the concern.
I think the concern - I mean, I did
documentary photography to show how our state
operated, how its people operated and how we
were in the last half of the twentieth
century. I do not want those images
mechanically altered in an age of
digitalization to be something that they were
not.
Q: In the fifty years plus that you've
been in journalism, you've seen some dramatic
changes in the technology, of what we could
do and what we can't. Have those been for
the good? Or has there been a problem you
see with what we can do?
A: I think all the technical changes are
absolutely wonderful, especially the
Internet. I can't speak for how other people
or maybe art photographers might want to do
their images. All I can say is that as a
documentary photographer, I want the images
un-manipulated and it be relatively
straightforward to communicate what I saw and
what needed to be said. Of course, my
special concerns in our state became race
relations and how we treat each other, on my
people pictures. Plus, I inadvertently did a
great many pictures showing women's roles
before equality. --
Section 4:
Q: You and I were talking earlier this
week about the Percy Harris story. I wonder
if you could expand on that, and what the
Gazette's role played in that?
A: Well, [about the] Percy Harris came to
town as a resident at St. Luke's Hospital.
He was from Waterloo, from an extremely poor
family. He had married the black doctor's
daughter and she came from a very good
distinguished family. Her father was one of
the first medical graduates, black, at the
University of Iowa, I think, in the early
1900s. And Percy Harris was upward social
mobile. But he had a little problem. His
wife was Catholic and they had about seven or
eight children at that point, and Cedar
Rapids had racial districts. You could not
live north of Mount Vernon Road or in the
upper northeast area, or the more affluent
southeast area. Very few black people lived
in better areas of the southwest Cedar Rapids
or northwest. So Percy was restricted to
about an eight-block area, none of it
suitable for a medical doctor and his family.
He was condemned in chit chat by others, for
having too many children and for being black
and for wanting to live the way other doctors
lived. So, there was no housing available
for him when he made his decision to stay in
Cedar Rapids. Since he was a Methodist, he
met Robert Armstrong, who owned a department
store. The Armstrongs had become socially
active in the NAACP because their daughter,
Goldie, was a missionary to Africa. She came
home and said, "Why don't you have any black
people working at Armstrong's, other than
running an elevator up and down?" So the
Armstrongs promoted black people behind the
counter and proceeded to offer opportunity
and jobs. Well, Dr. Harris, of course, being
a Methodist and Robert Armstrong being a
Methodist, they met and I suppose Armstrong
was on the Board of St. Luke's and this
problem arose regarding where Dr. Harris and
his brilliant family, which ultimately was a
dozen children, were to reside. So, the
Armstrongs decided that they might as well
reside next door to them, on Beaver Avenue
and 34th Street on Pleasant Hill, the name of
their home. So, they decided to give the
Methodist Church the land for the Harris
home, as a tax write-off. But the Methodists
were, in turn, to sell it to the Harris'.
Well, this caused an enormous meeting and
uproar at the church, in which the church
congregation met to vote on whether this deal
should go through. Of course, the Gazette
and Mr. Aaron Jack Illion had a policy of
only covering black crime.
Q: Was that a stated policy or was that
implied?
A: I think that if I couldn't cover any
other, ever do a black teenage girl who was a
straight-A student and outstanding in
volunteer and other activities, I think the
odds on anybody black being covered in a
feature story were pretty remote. So, of
course, I told the city desk at the Register
about this and they swarmed in, with Leftie
Mills, their top investigative reporter and I
did some photos and Mills did an absolutely
tremendous banner story. Of course, we sold
out of newspapers in Cedar Rapids, because
the Gazette simply didn't cover it, because
to the Gazette, it didn't exist. I thought
it was quite exciting!
Q: Absolutely. And you had pitched this
story to Jack Illion?
A: No, no. I worked for the Register by
that point in time. I had worked for the
Register ever since I sold them the birth of
the baby pictures that I did myself.
Q: I want to ask about that, too, but how
was it? Was the Gazette ever given a chance?
Did you ever notify the Gazette?
A: No, why would I? I wasn't on their
payroll or any relationship with them.
Q: Did the Register just beat the Gazette
on the story?
A: Yes, it was wonderful!
Q: Did the Gazette ever come back and do
the story?
A: I think they ultimately did a coverage
of it. But it was pretty after the fact,
because the Register, as I recall, for
several days in the weeks that were involved,
would have banner headlines. So if you
wanted to know what was happening with 3,000
Methodists in Cedar Rapids, you better take
the Register or pick it up off the news
stand. I don't recall that the TV news did
anything with it.
Q: Can you recall what year this was?
A: I think it was '62.
Q: So you were long gone from the Gazette.
A: Oh, I'd been gone from the Gazette
since '52. I was ten years out. --
Section 5:
Q: I wanted to go back to your days at the
Gazette though, when you first started,
actually. Who hired you and what was your
pay?
A: It was $45.00 a week and hired by Pete
Hoyt, managing editor. Pete Hoyt and John
Reynolds, who ran the photo desk and the
feature desk, were just wonderful to me.
Q: What were your duties when you first
hired?
A: I was always a photographer and a
feature writer. They would both give
assignments and then I developed a network of
people that liked my pictures. I had
pictures that always had some degree of
impact, you know. So people would phone me.
The one picture that I have that had a great
deal of impact was when I was assigned to
cover a Coe College baccalaureate procession,
an event, going into the First Presbyterian
Church. And a professor stuck his tongue out
at me and I got the picture. It is a very
funny picture. I don't know if you've seen
it or not.
Q: Yes, it sounds familiar to me.
A: And the Gazette hesitated about running
it. And I said, "Well, I don't care. If
you don't want to run it, it's fine, but I'm
sending it off to the United Press. I've got
a career to put together." So that forced
the Gazette to run it. They ran it on the
back page of the paper, which a headline
"Pomp and Circumstance." Of course, that
really kind of helped my career in Cedar
Rapids, because everybody thought it was so
funny and they called me with more projects.
Well, Ben Peterson, who was chair of
chemistry at Coe College also called me. He
was just furious! And said I was to never
set foot on Coe College again and that I had
ruined the career of a young man.
Q: Of the professor that stuck his tongue
out at you?
A: That's correct. So, I guess my
response - I meant to say to Dr. Peterson,
but I guess I didn't. It was lucky that I
didn't put in that this professor's field was
sex research. [laughter]. But the San
Francisco Chronicle ran it with a wonderful
headline, Higher Education in Iowa. I mean,
I did sell it to the UP for five bucks.
Q: Do you know whether he did that gesture
kind of whimsically? Or did he do it
hostilely?
A: No, he did it whimsically. He knew me
because I was doing quite a bit of work for
Kathy Culvert Stupponick, who was PR director
for Coe, but after that, of course, I never,
ever was given another commercial photography
job from Coe. I had to drift into obscurity
as far as they were concerned, until maybe 15
years later, one of the professors in art
gave me an exhibition at Coe. And I had had
another one since then.
Q: But you did end up photographing the
ladies at Coe?
A: Yes. I did set foot there again. But
not as a commercial or freelance
photographer. I went as Ruth Nash's guest to
the Coe Faculty Wives Club because I was
interested in art, always, and Ruth was
interested in art and had become my good
friend, but she also became my good friend
primarily due to the campaign for equalizing
race relations in Cedar Rapids. Ruth and
Russ Nash spearheaded many activities and
projects to prevent urban renewal until real
estate was opened up to all blacks, not just
a black doctor who would have a large income,
but to the average Cedar Rapids black man and
woman who needed housing. So we integrated
neighborhoods and had a project of no more
than one black family to the block to prevent
ghetto-izing another neighborhood.
Q: Did you write stories about this?
A: No, I only did the one piece of writing
and that was for the Iowan magazine on the
status of the black in our state and who they
were and where they were and what they were
doing. I didn't do very good coverage of Des
Moines, and the Moore - I think the people's
name was Morris and they had a newspaper.
Q: Sure, okay.
A: In general, we did kind of an overall
skim view of these people. But of course, I
must say, I also was doing Indians and I did
the Hispanics and Norwegians. I did a lot of
ethnic and in a way, the Iowan got me
involved in ethnicity.
Q: Photography and writing?
A: I always did the research and then I
would write and somebody would clean it up.
You know, proofreaders are still bleeding red
ink over everything I write.
Q: Would you consider yourself a good
writer?
A: Some people think so. But I don't
think that I aesthetically put words together
as well as I do the photography. Julie
Jenson McDonald of Davenport is a wonderful
wordsmith. Often, if I need to work with
someone, I send the research to Julie and she
polishes it. I have a lot of humility
regarding my writing abilities and virtually
no ego. But I do research pretty good. --
Section 6:
Q: We started the story about your
invitation to the art exhibit at Coe College.
Could you continue with that, the fact that
you ended up with this classic photograph of
these women?
A: There was a very nice nude by Kuni Oshi
that really, the figure in the painting in
really quite covered up, compared to a lot of
nudes. But there were four ladies sitting in
front of us.
Q: This was a ladies dining?
A: It was Faculty Wives Club Meeting. And
the exhibition was the collection, I think,
partly of the Elliotts maybe, and partly of
the Schramms, Dody and Jim Schramm of
Burlington. And the Kuni Oshi nude really is
a wonderful painting and it's worth an
enormous amount of money and one of the
ladies was looking right up the crotch of the
nude, over her shoulder, and another lady was
looking very disapprovingly. I had put a hat
on my head to go to this meeting because
women were wearing hats then, but I took my
super-wide Hasselblad camera with me and got
this incredible photograph.
Q: How did you take that photograph so
discreetly?
A: I had the camera on my lap and it was a
wide-angle camera and I just sat there and
saw this and clicked it. But they kept kind
of repeating to do it, but I think I only got
one really great negative on it. Then that
picture languished for a while, with nothing
much happening until Nancy Green McQue was
editor of the Junior League magazine wanted
to do a feature on culture in Cedar Rapids.
And I offered this print, this image to her
and she said, well she couldn't possibly run
it, because she might get sued, but I had to
go out and get model releases from all of the
people in it. And they were delighted to do
it! Women have always helped my career.
Q: How so?
A: By hiring me to do pictures for them or
telling me when there is something that I
might find interesting. For example, some of
my friends said, you know, you really ought
to get a load of Women's Club bowling. And
they all were in their fine dresses, bowling,
because they didn't want to get re-dressed
for lunch. And they're very funny! I mean,
the roles of what women do and did were very
amusing. Of course, I felt very alienated.
I could not understand why I felt to
estranged. But of course, obviously I
couldn't possibly do the roles that most
women were doing in the fifties and sixties
on the social level.
Q: You felt estranged, what? As a
professional?
A: Yes, I felt estranged as a professional
and I felt estranged as a woman. Maybe to
some extent, that is the role of the
documentary photographer because if you are
part of the group - I don't know if you have
the psychological distance to say "I'm going
to photograph, I'm going to cover what in the
world these aborigines are doing." You know?
Even if they are my aborigines.
Q: With regard to the fact of the wide
photos that you took, when you went and asked
for the releases, what was their response?
A: Mrs. Barrow, Mrs. Arthur Barrow, said
she was just delighted because she loved how
she looked, because she detested nude
paintings. The others, the faculty wives,
thought it was absolutely hilarious and they
were very happy to give a release. As I
said, women have cooperated and have been
very helpful in the advancement of what I was
trying to do as a photographer. Now, maybe
they sensed they were somewhat displeased
with the roles they themselves had to live.
I think there was an element of that because
after I got my divorce in 1963, thirty
percent of the members of the Junior League
applied to me to be employed by me. I was
just amazed! So there was this kind of, I'm
sure, underlying discontent for our
generations, maybe since Adam and Eve left
the garden, as to what women's role has had
to be. --
Section 7:
Q: When you were in the Gazette newsroom,
did you ever feel discriminated against?
A: Sure. I got half the pay of the men.
I had to freelance to kind of get my money
situation to where I felt it should be. I've
always had an enormous amount of expense in
my life because photography is expensive to
do or to own the gear and the equipment. I'm
always just hanging by a thread in terms of
expense. Still am.
Q: I think you have more confidence than
you did, though, at the time. You say you
weren't just so confident back then.
A: I was terrified! Then, I had a good
friend, Mary Jane Morgan, who moved from
Cedar Rapids to Des Moines and took a lot of
my family pictures to show Better Homes and
Gardens, and their baby book editor, who also
had a column on child rearing and development
in the H & G in the late fifties, very early
sixties, flew into Cedar Rapids to look over
my work and in six weeks time, bought $8,000
worth of pictures. That launched me into
more than roll-a-cord cameras. I put every
cent of it in to Hasselblads, which I still
have today, forty years later. I mean, they
are just work horses.
Q: You talk about Hasselblads. What are
these? What kind of camera are these?
A: It's a still, two and a quarter square,
but they are lightweight. I felt at the time
that they had better clarity for me doing - I
had to do a lot of commercial photography to
make money as well as what I wanted to do.
And I got a clearer, better image for
enlargement for consumers I felt than if I
had been using 35mm and having possible grain
problems in processing or scratches. A
bigger negative is good, but you get it big
enough and you're not mobile enough to do
people. Basically, I'm a documentary
photographer of the human condition.
Q: When you were doing commercial
photography, were you getting your contracts,
I guess, word of mouth? Or were you actually
out there soliciting or was it a little of
both?
A: I suppose it is a little bit of both.
After John Culver was elected to the senate,
and I had done his campaign pictures. I
think we must have done four hundred of his
head, until he got the look that he wanted.
I asked him if I could have assignments in
USIA. And I got them. There is a feeding
relationship.
Q: Is this when he was running for U.S.
Senate?
A: Yes. I did his campaign pictures.
Then the Republicans hired me to go to
Washington and do his opponents. So I
thought that was kind of remarkable, to be
able to do both sides of this. As a
photographer, you are somewhat alienated, at
a distance, a psychological distance from
your subject matter.
Q: As a non-partisan photographer?
A: Yes.
Q: Talk about minorities and women in the
newsroom back in the early days. Did you see
many minorities represented?
A: Oh - they didn't exist.
Q: I thought there were several at the
Register who were writers but like you say,
not many. Was there anyone at the Gazette
that would be considered a minority?
A: Not unless you consider women a
minority at that point. And they did have
Del Blumenstein, who had one leg. He was
handicapped, physically. Great guy.
Photographer. He also processed film and
made prints. He was wonderful.
Q: Did this ever come up, was this ever an
issue at the Gazette, the fact that they
weren't represented?
A: I don't think it ever occurred to them.
Q: What were the women doing?
A: They were doing social roles. They
covered social events. Except for one, who
was an Air Force man's wife. I think he was
a co-ROTC or something like that, and she was
kind of a Helen Thomas type, but much more
gentle, and when they left, she was not
replaced.
Q: Was she a columnist or an actual
reporter?
A: She was an actual reporter. --
Section 8:
Q: What were the circumstances of you
leaving the Gazette?
A: I got pregnant. Pete Hoyt had decided
that I should have my maiden name, so I'm
there like eight months - maybe seven months
pregnant and they got embarrassed introducing
me as "our photographer, Miss Liffring."
Then, one of my duties was to go from the top
floor of the building, three stories down,
under the sidewalk of 5th Street, where the
dark room was. If it rained, of course, you
got electric shocks.
Tape One Side Two
A: Then they would say, "Just go down and
get this." I mean, they had those pneumatic
tubes - but that didn't work on pictures. So
I was the tube that went up and down. Well,
ultimately, it was very difficult in my
condition to be doing all these stairs.
Q: They had one of those at the Register,
too, where you could shoot copy down the
tubes.
A: Yes, but it didn't work on the photos
going up and down. I don't know about the
Register, but that kind of precipitated my
departure. Then they said, "If you have an
idea," I think it was Peter Hoyt that said
this to me, "be sure and tell your
successor." Because he knew that I generated
a lot of ideas. "And we'll just assign
those." And home I went.
Q: He would assign those, is that what he
said?
A: Yes, to somebody to do those ideas. It
made me very angry. I mean, I was just
furious.
Q: What made you so angry about that?
A: Being told I couldn't work anymore and
couldn't take my pictures for them and I was
to go home and that was the end of my career.
Q: Because you were pregnant?
A: Yes. I was to be a mother and I was to
stay home in the suburbs, which are really
quite boring, you know. And I did try being
a full-time housewife and mother for six
weeks. I got very depressed. By that time,
people were phoning me to ask if I'd come do
pictures for them.
Q: Was there ever an implication that
maybe you could come back after your child
was born?
A: No! I was out the door, forever.
Q: Not your choice?
A: Not my choice. It wasn't so much the
fact they didn't pay me very much that I
cared about, is that I just liked going out
and photographing people and documenting and
doing it. So, I photographed the birth of my
baby. Because I felt, in my condition, if I
could do that and show other women that
childbirth was not to be a terrifying
experience, that would provide me a social
service and it would give me more confidence.
The Catholic Hospital was thrilled with the
idea because they thought it was a wonderful
promotion for their birth department. Here
we are, fifty years later, and Mercy Hospital
in Cedar Rapids is still promoting birth at
Mercy. So I got the pictures and every
magazine in the United States rejected them,
that I could see about sending them to. Look
rejected them initially and Life and Ladies
Home Journal. The whole bit. So finally, I
sent them off to the Des Moines Register's
Picture Magazine. And they just went wild
over them.
Q: Carl ??
A: Yes, and Frank Eyerly. Frank Eyerly
said it was one of the great photo features
of the 1950s, which I thought was just
wonderful of him. Then, they made an
arrangement that I would keep working with
them.
Q: So this precipitated your start of work
with the Register?
A: Yes. I mean, once I had that feature,
they hung onto me. And they paid me a lot of
money for those three pages. They ran banner
headlines about it and advertised the
feature. Then the Cowles picked them up for
the Des Moines paper, and for Look, which had
already rejected them and they wanted the
rejection letter. I should have made a copy,
except we didn't have copy machines. I
should have copied that rejection letter, but
I just sent it off.
Q: What do you mean? Look rejected those
pictures?
A: Initially.
Q: But then?
A: The Register and Mike Cowles wanted the
rejection letter and probably sailed into
Lewis at Look and I think they - soon, there
was a different name, in terms of photography
features for the magazine.
Q: So they showed up in both the Register
and in Look magazine?
A: Yes, but see, the Cowles family owned
Look. And Gardner Cowles had founded Look.
Q: How about Life?
A: They ran one as part of a photo
contest, in a very sexist manner. They ran a
photograph of somebody that had shot his
uncle, and it said, "He shot his uncle, she
shot her baby."
Q: Oh!
A: It was gross. Then, they refused to
use me as Joan Liffring. I was Mrs.
Hubenfeld. I was just furious.
Q: It was not appropriate.
A: I didn't think it was at that point,
even though I was married. I suppose this
was all rather hard on my first husband.
Q: How did he feel about this?
A: I don't know. I think he felt hostile
as hell as it turned out later.
Q: You didn't know it at the time, though?
A: Without getting into the personal
relationship, I think that he ultimately
decided that I shouldn't be working for the
Register and have this career. I guess he
felt uncomfortable because it was a much
better paper than the Gazette for those
years.
Q: And your husband at the time was the
editorial page editor at the Gazette?
A: He was a reporter for quite a while and
then he went into the editorial area.
Q: Did you get any negative feedback about
the pictures?
A: About the birth pictures? I think my
Aunt Madeline was aghast but she lives in the
period of Louis XVI at Versailles
Castle.[laughter and inaudible]. She was at
Versailles in Los Angeles at some flea
market, but she has her own world.
Q: I'm just thinking, in the fifties, the
same feelings.
A: Women liked it because it showed you
didn't have to be terrified. And the medical
people liked it.
Q: Did they use it to [inaudible]
A: No. It had quite a bit of publicity
with the major papers. The United States
Information Agency [USIA] bought them to show
the women in Finland. Because women in
Finland tend to have birth in the sauna,
because it's sterile. It's very hot and it's
very sterile and it's a clean place on the
farm and they birthed there, historically.
So I suppose the USIA figured that an
American woman photographing the birth of her
baby would appeal to the Finns. And I only
photographed what I could see. Now you can
see birth on TV, and that's a radical shift.
Mine were kind of modest little pictures.
Q: You said your family had some feelings
about it. Was there any other reaction from
readers?
A: Just my aunt that lives in this elegant
world that she has created.
Q: I'm wondering if someone - if they ever
got letters at the Register.
A: I don't think so.
Q: Like you said, they were relatively
modest pictures, but still.
A: I had one with the baby's feet up in
the air and the umbilical cord still attached
to me before he had breath. And the doctor
was so excited about having his picture
taken, he forgot to scrub up before he came
in, and they called him Dirty Gerty for
years.
Q: Who was the doctor?
A: Dr. Sam Lear in Cedar Rapids. A
general practitioner. I didn't go to an
ob/gyn person, I just went to my family
doctor.
Q: Did you anticipate that these photos
would end up all?
A: Yes, I wanted them to.
Q: That was the plan?
A: Yes. I wanted my career that the
Gazette was denying me. I was furious about
it. --
Section 9:
Q: Talk about some of your other
assignments with the Register when you doing
freelance, ones that were most memorable for
you. Did you do any feature writing at your
time at the Register?
A: No, I just did my captions and a block
of type. Then Cal Gartner, who was a great
wordsmith, re-wrote them, put good headlines
on. Then, I got a lot of assignments just as
spin-offs. Like the Chamber of Commerce
magazine wanted H.R. Gross covered, the
senator. Was he a representative or a
senator?
Q: He was a representative.
A: So I covered H.R. Gross. I went up to
Waterloo and photographed him. But I did a
lot of photography for ad agencies. Because
I had done family photography from people who
owned corporations in Cedar Rapids, those men
decided that they liked what I had done on
their family so well, that they would like me
to do their ad pictures and whatever they
needed for their corporations. That, along
with my nice, sharp Hasselblad, threw me into
a whole other world, economically. Because I
felt I should have New York rates even though
I lived in Cedar Rapids. So I charged them.
Q: And you got them.
A: Yes. A lot of these people became very
good friends and they wanted to take care of
me. Now, I always drove little Volkswagens.
I didn't dress very well. One time, my
housekeeper had a friend who asked her if she
was still working for that woman who looked
like poor white trash. Because I always
dressed very simply and did not call any
attention to myself because as a documentary
photographer, if you blend into the woodwork,
you can do far better. Although one time I
had to do some pictures of a meeting with
either 300 or 600 men and I tried to figure
out what to wear. I decided there was only
one possible color and that was red.
Q: Red?
A: Red. So I wore my red dress. And the
after-dinner speaker, who was sitting
[inaudible] asked somebody to get rid of this
woman that was in the room photographing. I
thought that was very funny.
Q: Did you leave?
A: Sure. I didn't care.
Q: There is no other garb you could have
worn, except a red dress?
A: Oh, I didn't think so.
Q: You didn't want to try the black suit,
huh?
A: Nope. I wore my very bright red dress.
Q: Did you get the photos you wanted?
A: Sure.
Q: What were they of?
A: I don't know, various people. They
were insignificant.
Q: So that was the one time you weren't
inconspicuous?
A: Yes.
Q: Other memorable stories that come to
mind or situations when you were doing
free-lance for the Register?
A: Not particularly. --
Section 10:
Q: Talk about the equipment that you used
back then, too. I know that you said you
have about seventy pounds that you still
carry around. But I imagine it was more than
that, back then.
A: Not really, because I never had the
strength to do much more than that. I always
had a flash battery that I bounced off. I
don't like direct flash. I had three
cameras, in case one broke.
Q: You don't use a flash now -
A: A bounce. I still bounce when it's too
dark. But in general, since I'm not doing
commercial photography any more, or much with
having assignments, it's pretty lightweight.
And now I've gone to Leica Flexis. Then, my
husband, Duane, has the digital camera. He's
learning how to operate it.
Q: Are you into digital at all?
A: I got the camera. But I handed it to
Duane.
Q: So it's analog, huh?
A: I wanted it to photograph book covers
for the Web, primarily. But it's kind of
nice, as a note-taking camera. For the money
involved, it's tremendously sharp. It's a
Leica. It was under $1,000.
Q: Were you working at the Iowan freelance
at the same time you were working at the
Register?
A: Yes.
Q: Was there a distinction between the
kind of stories you would do for either?
A: Yes. I would say the Register, in
general, was more of a hard news kind of
coverage. Well then, eventually, in addition
to Picture Magazine, a woman reporter on the
Register, whom I did not know and I don't
think I've ever met her, named Lula Mae Cole,
suggested to Frank Eyerly and John Zug that I
be engaged to do one picture a week in Cedar
Rapids to help build circulation. Anything I
wanted. So, I would come up with a list of
what they might like to have and then John
and I would go over it by phone. I talked to
him for nine years. Never occurred to me
that I'd marry him.
Q: So nine years before you actually
married him?
A: Yes. From the time I was 28 years old
on. Married him when I was 38.
Q: Had you ever seen him?
A: I saw him three times at his desk. Of
course, we discussed a lot of things other
than the assignments.
