my Desmond Tutu photo on the cover of his new autobiography

My wonderful agency passed along some photographs from Desmond Tutu's 80th birthday and the release of his autobiography that occurred last week in Capetown, South Africa at a church that was once at the center of resistance against the apartheid government. The publishers chose an image I shot of Tutu a few years ago for the cover.




photos courtesy of PQ Blackwell Publishers

I don't see photo shoots as opportunities as much as they are experiences, brief moments to be lived through and hopefully changed from in some way or another. What I remember about photographing Desmond Tutu at the tail end of a two day conference was that he had a plane to catch and I had to push a little to even have him sit for me. He was in an enormous hurry and stood there with this beatific smile on his face as he yelled at me to finish up and get a move on so he could get to the airport. There wasn't any malice in his voice and he patted me on the back and gave me that same smile as he rushed out of the tiny, makeshift studio I had spent hours crafting. As far as I know, he caught his plane, and I learned that it's always worth that extra, sometimes uncomfortable effort to approach a subject, even if their time is brief.

While it was enormously gratifying to get a copy of his autobiography with one of those photographs selected as the cover image, the more exciting thing was the enormous fresco of Reverend Tutu painted by local artists based on the image, that will hang on the wall in one of his charities in South Africa.

The title of this post is in reference to the video below, which shows Rev. Tutu getting his groove on during his birthday celebration. The video also shows him checking out the painting (apparently he thought the artist didn't paint his nose large enough) and Bono from U2 singing to him.

The Harvard Museum of Natural History is like an Indiana Jones movie set piece. It was built in a time when people went to museums to marvel at the spectacle of nature contained. Separated from visitors by thick panes of glass, there is nothing interactive here. Yet, hundreds of tiny fingerprints on the glass suggest the unconscious urge to connect to these creatures from the noisy groups of schoolchildren who visit each day.

With my portrait shoot for Discover Magazine complete and my flight home still a couple of hours away, I set about to bring back some photographic souvenirs from this brief trip north. It was a nice surprise when I get the magazine in the mail and saw that they ran a few of these as well.

Andrew Knoll for Discover Magazine

Photo shoots have different rhythms and flow and part of my job is sizing people up and trying to get a read on them pretty quickly. In Washington, where shoots with politicians can last less than five minutes, sometimes establishing rapport and getting familiar with the subject isn't possible and I've come around on embracing the tension that hangs over these briefest of jobs. These portraits speak to the distance and the lack of connection and sometimes that feels as telling to me as the images made after long conversations and buy-in from the subject.


Post Chef Robert Weland

I knew Robert Weland, the chef at Poste in Washington, DC was an avid gardener but I wasn't aware of the extent of his commitment until I arrived at the restaurant and saw dozens of fruit trees, raised beds and herb gardens extending throughout the terrace outside the restaurant. Weland was eager to talk about his growing plans for the year and we commiserated about what the hot weather was doing to our tomatoes, and which herb/fruit combinations worked best for desserts.

I had brought along a bag of organic vegetables that he gamely posed with and I left with some great recipes (beet greens - roast, sealed in foil w/ olive oil/salt/pepper) and photographs of a passionate chef and gardener.

Governor Nikki Haley for The Atlantic

I had two portrait shoots for The Atlantic in November that allowed me to spend time with a couple of the new leaders of the Republican Party. Governor-elect Nikki Haley was still in her campaign office, filled with leftover boxes of campaign paraphernalia, generic furniture and a lived-in dinginess that I've seen in every campaign headquarters I've been in. She couldn't have been more accommodating with her time and after the shoot, her communications director dropped in with an autographed note on letterhead reading "Thanks for the great photos - Nikki Haley." I couldn't decide if I found this endearing or an attempt to sway the photos I submitted, but it was certainly a first for a shoot.

You can read Hanna Rosin's article about Gov. Haley here. Incidentally, a month later, I was at Hanna's home in DC for The Wall Street Journal.


Senator Mitch McConnell for The Atlantic

I think journalist Joshua Green's description of Senator McConnell sum up my impressions of him him better than I could do on my own:

"McConnell, 68, is owlish, phlegmatic, and gray, and often looks bothered, as though lunch isn't agreeing with him. He has been described as having "the natural charisma of an oyster." Yet you sense that this is not so much a burden as a choice, that he has pared away any qualities extraneous to his political advancement."

I'm used to extroversion and polish with the politicians I photograph, and Senator McConnell had neither of these, which I found challenging and (admittedly) a little refreshing. We talked about Lebanon, Kentucky, a small town in his home state where I had once spent a week photographing a family with seventeen children.

He soon stood up from the chair where we'd been shooting, silently announcing that my time with his was over.

Here are a few diptychs from the shoots with some additional images I liked. As always, a big thank you to Jason Treat and Katie Mathy for this shoot. I hold a special place in my heart for the magazine, as they gave me my first magazine cover and continue to produce some of the best journalism around.

Michelle Rhee for the Washingtonian

Like many DC residents (44% to be exact), I was saddened to see Mayor Adrian Fenty voted out of office, mostly because of Michelle Rhee. DC has had its share of polarizing leaders, but Rhee might take the cake for her aggressive approach to reforming schools that included firing under performing teachers, closing schools and battling the teacher's union to eliminate tenure.

In short, she got things done, and the improved student test scores during her time as the DC School Chancellor proved her out. So it was exciting to get a call from the Washingtonian about photographing her, just a few weeks before she left town, went on Oprah, and began her new school reform venture.

As usual, it was a brief shoot, made even briefer by a non-working elevator that meant hauling equipment up three flights of stairs. After this unscheduled workout and a quick setup, I ended up with about ten minutes with Mrs. Rhee and guided her around the room through a few different setups before she had to leave.

In these situations, I'm always wrestling with really working a single setup versus pushing for multiple looks and hoping one comes together. Either way, I'm often walking that fine line between spontaneity and preparation, hoping for a moment, but realizing the limits of these brief interactions and what can be extracted from them visually.

In the end, these are sad images to me, of what could have been for DC public schools.