#2 - John Minchillo, AP
...eyes on the world
In my first posting I said, “In these entries, I’ll be exploring the overlap of visual storytelling and psychological insight. I’ll be sharing my photography, offering interpretations, and drawing connections. I’ll be reflecting on everyday encounters, current events, historical moments all through my uniques vision as a photographer who’s also a trained observer of the human mind.”
Here’s an example of what I mean…
This following video shows Associated Press photographer John Minchillo - dressed for war in black and gas mask - being physically attacked by rioters during the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021...
-YouTube
John is one of the country's great news photographers. His bravery in the face of riots, rebellions, marches, and protests is unparalleled. I've written about him before. His incredible images of the George Floyd protests in Minneapolis and year later put a big dent in me as his part of the Pulitzer Prize winner he and his his colleagues shared…
-Minneapolis on fire, 2020/John Minchillo, AP
The attack on him at the Capitol came about because, as you see, John is always in the very mouth of the beast. He stays inside the danger. He always faces both the angry mob and the angry police. He has absorbed blows and gas before, but never what could easily have become a threat to his life that day. And, the rioters know he is that close, making images of their violence. They feel the images John and others make caste them in a bad light, something that must be some kind of joke given what John’s photos document. His is the kind of behavior you see journalists endure in war zones, in banana republic coups, and in civil wars in Balkan countries. You don't usually see this in the US. Yet, now in this era of anything goes, everything does.
Or is this unusual?
In August 1982 I was a journeyman photojournalist in Washington DC working the freelance beat and covering whatever I could to make a buck and make it big. I covered many demonstrations during the few years after the Reagan election. There was one march by the Klu Klux Klan to commemorate the 20th anniversary of their opposition rally to the famous 1963 March on Washington led by Dr, Martin Luther King, Jr. I photographed this march on a hot Summer day as a murderous mob flaunted their racist and seditious beliefs.
It turned out that another freelancer and I experienced first hand the wrath of this maniacal mob. The KKK assembled their march at the Capitol and got a permit to march down Pennsylvania Ave to the White House where they would hold a rally. Many people lined the route shouting epithets and throwing raw eggs. Police phalanxes walked along with them to hold back the crowd. We photographers would be walking backwards in front of the marchers all the way.
That year, they held their rally around the platform on Lafayette Square across the street from the White House. But, as a freelancer, I knew I had to find a unique slant to the photo story or else my images would never been looked at by magazine editors who always favored their own staff photographers' take. So, I wandered around the fringe and caught a whiff of tear gas from about a block away near Farragut Square. There, I hooked up with the other freelancer named Robert, and the two of us soon found ourselves in the middle of 17th St NW and a riotous side show of citizens fighting white supremacists in a face off inside a cloud of tear gas.
Of course...we ran to the middle of it because that's where the pictures were.
Standing in between the KKK and the counter demonstrators along K Street, we made some pretty good images of what it felt like in the fog of the anger, the gas in the air and lungs, and the bricks torn from the sidewalk flying through the air. All seemed pretty normal... for a few minutes.
And then, we saw it.
Along the fringe of the street some KKK rioters saw Robert and me making our pictures. And, more importantly, we both saw them... coming at us from about 150 feet away. They were screaming about , "The Media!" and "They've got pictures of us!" and "Let's get them bastards!" We looked quickly at one another and knew then we had to run like hell or else a dozen pipe-wielding fanatics would capture us and beat us. We did not stop running until we were about two blocks away where we ducked inside a building. We waited a while and there was no sign of them. Cautiously, we left our haven and walked a block or so west to avoid the core of the rioting.
About a block from Lafayette Square, we saw something we thought we would ever see in America. A UPI photographer we knew who had climbed on top of a USA Today news box for an overall shot of the mob, was grabbed by rioters and pulled to the ground. We him being kicked and we started to run toward him to help, but - just in time - a Metro Police car came up, grabbed him from the mob, and threw him into the back seat of the squad car.
Robert and I ran off and sought safety in the cordoned off press area to catch our breath.
That UPI photographer suffered a broken collar bone and index finger, a concussion, and the loss of his cameras. But, a least he was alive.
My brush with the danger of an enraged mob driven by hatred of others, disdain for the law and the sanctity of the First Amendment was small time compared to what John Minchillo and a dozen others have endured in the last year alone, as they covered many riots in this country. They lay themselves out there, infiltrate into what everyone in the country now sees as a dangerous mob of radical skinheads, neo-Nazi's, white supremacists, and flat out crazy bastards, to bring us the experience of the rage and frothing at the mouth of people who want to hurt others, and impose their brand of authoritarianism, and destroy our way of life.
Thank you, John...Stay well
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An excellent post and a frightening comment on this chapter of history we must get through.