A Quiet Legend in His Time

Who is Paul Fusco? If you ask, perhaps your memory of his engrossing Look magazine stories has faded, or you’re too young to remember Look at all. Paul has been a photojournalist—in the best tradition of the profession—for over 40 years, and he’s been a Magnum member for 30 years. His long-standing fascination with challenging subjects such as presidential elections, nasty wars like those between Israel and its neighbors, and illegal aliens at the U.S./Mexico border crossing, is world renowned. Paul spent months in the vicinity of Chernobyl, where a nuclear reactor exploded in April 1986. His book, Chernobyl Legacy (de.MO, 2000) photographed with Magdalena Caris, documented the tragedy. Paul’s photographs reveal the valor and courage of those slowly and painfully dying of radiation poisoning.

Paul Fusco became interested in photography as a pre-teen. His father did a little snapshooting and Paul used a folding Kodak to photograph his grandparents in their old world Italian peasant garments. He grew up in a small Massachusetts town in a hardworking middle class immigrant neighborhood. “My family didn’t have magazines or other published works around,” he recalls, “so I only knew stilted pictures from the local daily newspaper, and sepia-toned portraits in a photographer’s window.” At 16, Paul saw a picture by Yousuf Karsh, of a dramatically lit black man, and says, “I was mesmerized by the power of its richly modulated skin tones. It astonished me, and ever since I’ve been trying to understand, control and present that magic.”

He was drafted into the U.S. Signal Corps as a photographer and spent his year abroad with the 7th Cavalry Infantry Division on the front line in Korea, covering constant forays and small actions. Paul explains, “Many assignments featured the lives of soldiers in everyday front line living, so photos could be sent to hometown papers. A few times I photographed some of the bravest men I could imagine, the minefield clearing squads. In other stages of war the air became a vast screaming monster of artillery and tank cannon explosions. But you never saw the enemy.

Continues Paul, “It was not a coherent experience. There was no pattern, no sense of connection between assignments. I never thought I was working toward a goal with a cumbersome 4 x 5 military Speed Graphic and film packs. There was no impetus to become a pro, but I was unaware of what that meant.

“I began to realize that I wanted my photographs to show what the people were feeling at the moments I shot. And I believe this is still what I try to capture most of the time. It’s what I’m most interested in understanding and revealing to others.”

On his return home, Paul studied at Ohio University, earning a B.F.A in photojournalism where he and other students on the GI Bill were energized, and inspired each other. He says, “I finally saw pictures by Gene Smith, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Edward Weston. Smith and Cartier-Bresson became lasting influences.”

During Paul’s junior year at college one of his instructors took student portfolios to New York to show magazine editors. Art Rothstein at Look liked his work, and Paul visited him and was offered a studio assistant job for a month. He worked with various photographers, editors, art directors and writers, learning about how a magazine is created. At the end of his month, photo editor Ben Wickersham asked him to call before he graduated the following year, and he was offered another summer job. Wickersham then showed Paul’s senior year projects to Look editors, and the rookie received some small test assignments. His apprenticeship ended when he was invited to join the Look staff.

Soon Paul became immersed in photojournalism. He showed his stories to top editors including editor Dan Mich. He learned to sequence his photos, hope for more pages and make verbal pitches for his stories. He recalls, “We had the pleasure of working with Alan Hurlburt and Will Hopkins, two of the best magazine art directors who ever laid out photo essays. When one of my stories was taking shape in layout, my throat would tighten, my eyes would water, my breathing faltered, and waves of epiphany would shoot up my body and out of my head. When the process was complete, I felt the story now lived!”

A few years after joining Look, Paul had an idea for an essay on the small, poor coal mining communities of Kentucky. “They were just assemblages of small, black cabins,” he observes, “along creeks or perched in mini-valleys. Writer Bill Hedgepath and I found a family on which to focus. The patriarch was a crippled and broken man who had been brutally treated in an unheated jail for advocating miners’ rights.

“That was an important story for me,” Paul continues. “It was my first attempt at trying to bring to life issues that dramatically affect our whole society. Central was the confrontation of powerful institutions and those miners’ lives. Other good stories followed: The Blackfeet Indians in Montana, the lives of Puerto Ricans in Manhattan, Mexico’s problems with some Indian minorities, and my son and daughter as children exploring the exquisite variety and beauty of nature on the West Coast. I also tripped along 6000 miles of the Iron Curtain, ending with a week in Berlin watching separated families standing in silent tears, trying to make contact with families 1000 feet beyond the Berlin Wall.”

Other Fusco stories showed what life was like in Calcutta; New York City’s Village area; and teen runaways, young girls maneuvering through alleys and dark rooms trying to survive the constant treachery of streetwise hustlers. For 14 years at Look, Paul worked on a fascinating variety of story subjects in his sensitive, empathetic manner. He says, “I felt blessed, shooting what I wanted to do, searching for subjects that mattered. I’ve always felt that if you stress depth and understanding in your photographs, you have to approach your work with great earnestness and commitment. When Look folded I was a mess. I had no experience selling myself to get work. At Look I had been in on every phase from story concept to layout. Now I realized I’d have to learn to freelance successfully, and I was surprised at how little attention other magazines gave to the idea of input from photographers.”

Before Look folded Paul had moved to Mill Valley, CA, and began to do freelance assignments for Time, Newsweek and other publications. His first personal project in the West was the California Grape Strike, and in honor of Cesar Chavez he called it “La Causa.” The images became a book that encompassed social issues, and it sold out but was not reprinted. Originally Paul modeled his photographic approach on W. Eugene Smith’s humanitarian photography, and by then he had devised his own style of interpretation. He did two other books, Sense Relaxation: Below the Mind and RFK: Funeral Train. The book of RFK (Robert F. Kennedy) images was republished in 2000. Regarding his time aboard the Kennedy train Paul says, “Those pictures have probably received the most recognition in my career.”
In the 1980s Paul continued to concentrate on people most in need of hope. He covered alternative lifestyles, hostels and hospices, the homeless and those suffering from incurable diseases. Since 1990 a major portion of his work has been self-generated and self-sponsored. “The market for serious photo essay photography is almost extinct,” he explains.

In 1993 Paul moved back to the New York area, and in 1997 when Magnum (he had been a full member since 1974) was planning its own 45th anniversary book, he searched for a theme that was important and under-reported. Then he heard about youngsters from Chernobyl coming to the United States for a summer escape from the blighted area in Belarus where a nuclear power plant had erupted poisonous radiation. He presumed the nuclear generators must have been fixed after 10 years, but learned the area was still a wasteland. It took six months of dealing with the Belarus government and people at institutions, but at last in June 1997 he flew to Kiev, and took a train to Minsk for a planned three-week visit that lasted three months. “My initial contacts were wonderful people,” he recalls, “but they had no clout with directors of institutions and asylums. Finally, I was put in touch with a great woman, Natasha Gontchar, who asked, ‘What do you want?’ I said Novinki, an asylum for children, and she took me there where I began the work that would change my life.

“Chernobyl Legacy, the book that came from my project required three trips over four years with help from many committed Russians to make a viable, powerful and truthful book. It was difficult to work with hundreds of people who willingly faced potentially great harm to help me get images of the tragedy that has befallen millions of people in Belarus, Russia and the Ukraine where the majority of the radiation fell.”

At 228 pages, Chernobyl Legacy is a striking testament to a beleaguered people and to Paul Fusco’s great skills in persuasion and photography, plus his dedication to ideals. He realized that men, women and children felt, “You have to fight for your life every day until you die.” Photographs of deformed children and other neglected victims of monumental negligence are touching and revealing. Black-and-white images were often shot in weak existing light. Of the color pictures Paul says, “They were taken by a terrific young photographer with a super eye, Magdalena Caris, who joined me on one of my trips. When I saw her work I asked to use some pictures in my book, now our book. I’m pleased with how they work in the context and rhythm of the book to improve the whole.”

Chernobyl is characterized by empty neighborhoods, vacant streets where flowers grow again, dump sites, faces of despair, figures of people in wheelchairs and hospitals, and perhaps the most moving scenes are inside Novinki, the children’s mental asylum. Paul wrote, “At birth most of these children were so horrifying to their parents that they were immediately abandoned to the state. Caesium 137 radiation kills the mind and body slowly.” Chernobyl Legacy was publisher Giorgio Baravalle’s first book, and it is beautifully designed with statements from various authorities included.

On each trip to Chernobyl Paul carried with him 300 rolls of Kodak Tri-X wrapped in lead bags, a Leica M6 and MP with Leicavit, a Canon SLR with a variety of lenses, plus a Sekonic handheld meter and a small portable flash unit. He prefers to work with 50mm and shorter lenses. With Toranto Labs in New York he worked out development times that he found “comforting,” for boosting film speed in low light.

In these days of digital equipment and complex film cameras, Paul Fusco travels lightly, thinks deeply, photographs intuitively and assigns himself difficult, challenging subjects. He has consistently represented the essence of photojournalism, which always involves personal integrity—the kind that creates images you can trust.

Lou Jacobs Jr. is the author of 30 how-to photography books, the latest of which is How to Start and Operate a Digital Portrait Photography Studio (Amherst Media). He has taught at UCLA and Brooks, is a former president of ASMP national, and has also written and illustrated numerous books for children. He enjoys shooting stock during his travels in the U.S. and abroad.