(stock Getty Image)
I am quite familiar with the meaning of this oftentimes maligned skill set. Both my wife and our daughter chose this as a career path. When I was Director of Photography for Palm Springs Life Magazine back in the late 70’s, The other hat I wore was for its sister organization, the Milt Jones Agency, which put the ‘public’ in agency with all capital letters.
Pittsburgh, Pa., back in the 60’s was the backbone of the steel industry for our country. Unfortunately, the manufacturing of steel releases a lot of particulate matter into the atmosphere. To calm the fears of the locals, these steel mills did the majority of their releasing after the sun went down.
We didn’t really have a vibrant environmental movement back then, but I did find the image compelling, so minding my own business and standing across the street on a public sidewalk, I snapped a few frames.
I might as well have been throwing hand grenades at a nearby daycare center, the response from the ‘steelies’ was just as severe. Before I could advance my film wind lever for my third exposure, two very large, very burly, and very angry goons blocked my egress on both sides.
“You’re coming with us” they grunted. Too frightened to be any more afraid, we marched across the street and through the glass doors. I was led down a corridor to an office with the inscription PUBLIC RELATIONS in very large letters of the door. Indeed…
Had I known that the future held at least three more incidents of being led around by the short hairs by two goons that looked like they ate nails for breakfast, I might have found this amusing. The guy in the chair was very matter-of-fact. “What are you doing, who do you work for?”
Being 18 years old in 1967 meant it didn’t matter if you were lying or telling the truth. All you had to do was appear to be ready to drop a load in your pants. That’s all these goombahs wanted to see.
I put on a good show – and I was telling the truth -- so well in fact that they gave me a tour of the factory and let me photograph whatever I wanted to. Unfortunately, as young and naive as I was, I had the sinking feeling that I was the proverbial canary in the coal mine. Everyone around me had a Hazmat suit on – with gloves and a respirator.
I tried breathing really really slowly…
My skillset as a budding photog was moving ahead quickly by this point in time. Even though the rooms were poorly lit -- and the thugs were giving each other a wink-wink / nod-nod that I probably would not grab any photos of any value, they didn’t know I was loaded for bear – literally. The fastest film on the market at that time, Kodak’s TRI-X, was suitable for 99% of my low light needs. I had recently purchased my first roll of a brand new, just released, Kodak 2475 Recording Film, which would produce acceptable results in an area with less than 1/8 of normal light intensity.
Trying to balance the notion that I was truly in an area that was truly unsafe, I shot the roll and was quickly ushered outside by the goon squad. I thanked them and made my way back to the dormitory, grinning ear to ear that I had survived my first encounter with people who genuinely had something to hide.
Unfortunately, the film and prints were lost in the flood of ’72, but the memories do linger on. While I never intentionally went out of my way to expose any particularly problematic issues floating around the surface of human perception, I stumbled on plenty of them over the years. Some I talked my way out of, some I had to beat feet to get away from, and at least once I got tuned up pretty righteously.
The lesson here is a simple one: Don’t go looking for trouble -- eventually, it will find you. How you wiggle your way out, well, that’s another matter entirely…
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