Among John’s many photos, there is an interesting group of photographer portraits. That is, John and fellow Time Inc. photographers Richard Meek, George Silk and Johnny Dominis et al. covered numerous major sporting events together, and they took pictures of each other in the field. These portraits are buried amongst Olympic, World Series and Playoff stories in the archive. I’ve pulled together a selection of Olympic portraits below.
John covered nine Olympics, beginning with the 1956 Summer Games in Melbourne, where he & Dick Meek were Sports Illustrated’s sole photographers. Not surprisingly, John brought A LOT of gear to Melbourne. In fact, Dick recalled there being so much equipment crammed into their tiny hotel room they could barely move. John’s photo of Dick shows he wasn’t exaggerating!
John’s photo of George Silk covering track & field in Melbourne (below) is interesting not only as a portrait, but also in showing the cameras & lenses the LIFE photographer used to capture the action.
George Silk turned his lens on John at the 1960 Rome Olympics (below) and caught him in a spontaneous, “singing in the rain” moment. He later sent John a 16 x 20 print of the photo, mounted and signed, that remains in the archive. A wonderful portrait of one photographer by another.
Below is another Silk portrait of John from the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo, which they both covered for LIFE. It captures John’s exuberance taking pictures, even when nearly getting frostbite in the process.
Sometimes a photographer’s quest to get a photo becomes the photo. Below is a picture of John (lying on the ice) with several other photographers, each trying to take the perfect picture of figure skater Peggy Fleming at the Grenoble Olympics. My dad’s photo of Fleming, the only American to win gold in 1968, appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s Olympic issue.
John snapped this portrait of Johnny Dominis at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City (below), which they both covered for LIFE. The two were good friends and also serious competitors. One reason they regularly trained their lenses on each other was to confirm the different vantage points an event was being covered from.
Photographers working for the same magazine often flipped a coin to determine their positions at Olympic events. My dad liked to tell a story about the time Dominis asked to trade positions with him shortly before the start of the Munich Marathon. John readily agreed, as it put him at the finish line, the perfect spot to capture American Frank Shorter winning the gold medal. His photo made the cover of LIFE (below L). Dominis liked to tell his own story about landing the Sapporo Olympics cover (below R) and besting John with more photos in the issue!
John (L) with Dominis (C) and Peter Stackpole (R), another distinguished LIFE photographer, at Mark Kauffman’s memorial service in 1994. One could easily write a book on Mark’s remarkable photographic career, including his friendship with my dad and Dominis going back to their high school days in L.A. The comaraderie these photographers shared was lifelong, and their portraits of each other shed an interesting light on those relationships.
Linda Zimmerman, Ph.D.
April 21, 2021