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Master Photographers Tell You How

Todd Heisler - Interview by Mark Lapin TakeGreatPictures.com contributor Mark Lapin interviews Todd Heisler about covering Iraq, documenting the grief of the families of fallen soldiers, media coverage of the war in general, and more. Article rating: 10.00

Editor’s note: for an even more in-depth interview with Todd Heisler, please see Mark Hancock’s excellent piece (http://markhancock.blogspot.com/), which was very helpful in researching and preparing this article.  Hancock is a staff photojournalist for the Beaumont Enterprise who writes a blog on photojournalism and the eccentricities associated with gathering images for major American newspapers.

TGP: You’ve covered Iraq in two ways-- on the ground as an embedded reporter and back home working with the families in Final Salute.  How do you compare those experiences, and what do you think of media coverage of the war?

Todd Heisler: Well, it’s very different logistically going to Iraq.  Working over there is much more physically taxing than working at home.  The majority of what I’ve done in Iraq has been embedding.  That’s very physically demanding and very time consuming. You don’t shower much; you have to be on your feet a lot; you work long hours; the climate is very unpleasant.  Whereas this other project is much more emotionally taxing.   The common thread between the two is that you have to make connections.  Here you have to work more on human connections. 

Over there, in some ways it’s easier to work with the military because if a commander gives you access and says you’re allowed to be here, then you’re allowed to be there.  Everything is on the record. Here it’s much different, not just with Final Salute but in general. On military bases here, the Public-Affairs guys are much more hands-on.  I remember going out to an airport to cover the homecoming of guys I had met embedding in Iraq.  I was covering them while they were turning in their weapons and Public Affairs made me stand behind a yellow line.  I was thinking, Hey, I was over there living with these guys in Iraq, and now I can’t cross the yellow line?  But there were other media people out there.  The Marines were tired.  They didn’t want us getting up in their faces.  I find there’s a usually a reason for everything, and I try to think about why people do act the way they do.

The common thread between working here and over there in Iraq is that if you want to do compelling stories, you have to connect with people.  I just connected in different ways.  In Iraq, I was never in a situation where I had to help or even have casualties in front of me.  I’ve had conversations with commanders who ask, ‘If this goes really bad, what are you going to do?’ You have to make your case as a journalist and explain why you’re there.  But I don’t want to stand in way of someone living or dying.  I’ve heard James Nachtway [one of today’s most celebrated war photographers] say, ‘If I’m the only person in a combat situation who can help, then I have an obligation to help.  But if I’m not the only one, if things are being taken care of, then I have to do my job.’

But personally, if the situation came up, I would rather live with not getting a good picture in a certain situation than with knowing that I let someone die in order to get the shot. Of course, we all think that way but when you get into day-to-day situations, we all get caught up in assignments, deadlines and competition.  Things can push you to point where you’re not as sensitive as you should be.  You have to check yourself from time to time.

TGP: Was Major Beck taking a risk in letting you cover the grief caused by the deaths in Iraq when the military seemed to be discouraging coverage of coffins coming back home?

Todd Heisler: Beck’s policy, which as far as I know is the policy, is that these homecomings occurred on public airports, and in that situation, it’s up to the families.  I don’t think the military has a policy about taking photos of caskets on public airports as long as the Marines, the airport and the family agree.  At the Reno airport, where I took the pictures of Kathy meeting her husband’s casket, they had let people out there in 2003, when the first Nevada casualty came back from Iraq. 

So it’s a very different situation from coffins arriving at Dover, which is an air force base and subject to all the intricacies that cover media working on military installations.  But people ask about it a lot.  Beck had to think about what this meant to his role in the military and how much access we were going to have.  He was dedicated enough to the story that he was willing to discuss it and build a relation with us.  It took a lot of work with Beck, not just because of the military but also because he was very protective of the families.

I think it was the photographs that convinced him I could deal with the story in a sensitive and respectful way.   If I was dealing with a story on hospice or anything that touches on grief and death, I would have to deal with some of the same issues just to convince people that I could handle it tastefully.  That’s where this story goes beyond Iraq and even beyond war.

TGP: What do you think of media coverage of the war?

Todd Heisler: I’ve had this conversation with a columnist I work with and respect.  His take is that we have a clear idea of the big picture, the strategy and what the generals say, the money and the troop levels.  But what’s missing is the small picture, the little day-to-day things for people in Baghdad or for the military; the little things that are done that make up the big picture.  The little victories and setbacks that you see all the time with the military are pretty compelling stuff.  They give you a better idea of how this whole thing is being run but we don’t see enough of that.

TGP: Because papers aren’t interested?  Or people aren’t interested?  Or it’s getting almost impossible for reporters to go out on the street?

Todd Heisler: It’s a combination of all those things.  Newspapers are really questioning if they want to send someone over now.  It’s harder and harder for any journalist to be stationed in Baghdad and go out on street and try to connect with people.  And embedding is a time commitment.  I think the story of military is more than just battles.   You have to go in and spend at least a month if really want to get a good story.  There’s a lot of downtime.  They don’t go out on missions every day, at least not the kind you see on TV.  I thought the way the unit I covered was working with the local government and doling out money to them, was kind of interesting.  We need to understand how that works and how that doesn’t work.  We need trained journalists there to really tell the story.

TGP: Going back to your story, Final Salute, and the way it seems to keep going, reaching across so many lines, how do you explain it?

Todd Heisler: I can’t explain it.

TGP: But you must have known it was very good while you were doing it.

Todd Heisler: Well, we were very proud of the story but when we were putting it together, we got so close to it that we didn’t really know if people would understand.  I looked at the pictures so many times that I began to question if they were any good.  I saw all the flaws and none of the positive aspects. 

But when we went to the printing press to see it come out, the guy who ran the press grabbed the story and started looking at the photos and reading the captions.  That tells you something.   He said, ‘This is amazing but it’s just too much. I have to take it home and look at it.’  And the next day, I showed the section to a co-worker who didn’t know what we were working on (we kept it pretty low-key around the paper because we were doing a lot of stuff that nobody had done before), and the way he responded to the story told me that we were really going to make an impact. 

But I never thought that it would be as viral as it has been, never thought that people would send it out online, or that some guy would make a chain letter of the story and circulate it that.  So the pictures keep getting passed around, and it really doesn’t matter that it was published last year because some guy might have read it just last week.  It’s a timeless enough story so that the impact is still there.

I don’t think it’s just about the Iraq war, or that it’s just about war.  In a lot of ways, it’s not even about war.  It’s about grief and how people deal with the loss of a loved one.  It’s about Marines and their culture and how they treat their own.  There four or five key, universal themes that people are touched by.  I’ve thought about it and talked to friends, and if people just latch onto the one idea that it’s about the Iraq war, then they’re oversimplifying it.

TGP:  But within the context of Iraq, it also says something that a lot of people on both sides of the issue want to feel--  that in a situation where so many things have been done wrong and have gone wrong, this one thing that is being done properly.

Todd Heisler: Yeah, I think a lot of response comes from that direction.  People look at the story and can see some hope that through all the terrible things that come from war, there’s still somebody who’s actually helping people or at least trying to.

TGP:  I’ve read a lot of interviews with you but they never talk about where you grew up and your family background.  Since your personal qualities were so important in relating to the families, can you tell us a little about your own?

Todd Heisler: Well, I guess I had a pretty simple experience growing up in the suburbs of Chicago.  My dad worked for IBM and my mom worked for United.  My dad passed away five years ago, and I feel like that experience really shaped how I handled Final Salute.  He was only 61 and died of cancer, and we basically watched him.  He died at home, and it was tough on the family, a painful experience.  But finally, I just felt this was a guy who had touched so many lives and knew so many people and he lived a good life.

TGP: Were there any artistic influences?

Todd Heisler: No, a great aunt did some oil painting, and a distant cousin was a photographer for the Chicago Tribune but neither of them had much influence on me.  But as a kid, I was always big on drawing and painting, always taking art classes and really enjoyed them. I guess I was kind of an anomaly but a pretty normal kid overall.

As a little kid, my mom gave me a little, old plastic Kodak and said some film, and I ran outside and shot the whole roll of film in about five minutes, just following my neighbors and wandering around.  Then my mom took the camera away because I was wasting film. That was about the extent of it till I got a little older.  Then my dad had a camera, and I took pictures and enjoyed it but never really did anything with them until I got to high school and took a photo class course.

That’s were it all came together for me.  I’d always liked drawing but felt that it was too time consuming so I really enjoyed the process of photography, the immediacy, the darkroom. 

I had a really photography teacher named Joe Boyle. I don’t even think he took pictures but he was really amazing.  The really cool thing about being in Chicago was that we had access to great museums.  He took as to Avedon’s American West exhibition of life-size prints when I was about 15 and also to a Garry Winogrand show.  So I was exposed to this amazing work and that’s where my interest really kicked in.

TGP:  You started as a community photographer, and I read that you thought of Final Salute as a kind of community photography.  How so?

Todd Heisler:  Well, we did travel around the country but everything had a connection to Denver or people in Denver.  We didn’t randomly pick families or places to go.  These are people I would see again.  I wouldn’t just come in photograph and leave.  Every Marine family who lost someone in Iraq continues to go to all the marine funerals in their area. So if I go back to cover a Marine funeral, I will see every other family that I have worked with on this story.  One mom told me that it was such a blur when her son got buried that she kind of wants to go back and witness it again.  They also want to support each other.  But the point is that I have to face them again because they live in my community.  As a journalist you can’t do things to please everybody.  But if you do it truly and right, at least you have their respect.

TGP: Since working on Final Salute, you’ve been on some very different stories, including going over to Bangkok to cover the extradition of John Mark Karr, the guy who claimed to have killed Jon Benet Ramsey.  What was that like?

Todd Heisler: I didn’t know who this guy was but I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him in some ways.  The media was pretty controlled when they removed him from the detention center.  Everybody stayed back and let it happen.  But out at the airport, it was total media frenzy.  Everybody wanted to get pictures of him arriving.  I got there late because I couldn’t find my driver, and I was actually glad I missed the scene.  

When I showed up at the airport, I saw Paula Bronstein from Getty (a photojournalist I know) and her arm was bleeding and her glasses were broken. I guess it was like this total frenzy, a total media crush.  It got really nasty.  I was really glad I missed it.  When Karr got back to Boulder, the first time they paraded him in front of the press, there was a real crush as well.  I heard that Karr had actually received some bruised ribs in the shoving. 

It’s tough, especially on something like that, which is very high profile.  Everybody is interested. It has to be done. You have to cover it. But at what point are you crossing the line?  For me, it’s not the ideal situation, not my favorite thing to do.  That’s when you have to say to yourself, ‘I have a job to do and I’m not going to love everything I do everyday but I’m lucky to be a photographer.

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