“I have a theory that every time the shutter captures a frame, that image is recorded at a very low threshold in the brain of the photographer… as ‘photographic lint.’ When the photographs of Monica Lewinsky, in her beret on the lawn of the White House emerged, I ‘knew’ I had seen that face with the President. I had no idea when, or where … I hired a researcher, and she started to go through the piles of slides. After four days, and more than 5,000 slides, she found ‘one’ image, from a fund-raising event in 1996. Gotcha!” -Dirck Halstead
Dirck Halstead, UPI photographer
Dirck Halstead was the photojournalist’s photojournalist. He made photographs of crises, conflicts, diplomatic meetings, shootings, presidents, world leaders and wars for more than 50 years. He worked for United Press International and Time magazine often in very dangerous conditions.
He covered Presidents. He photographed Richard Nixon’s groundbreaking trip to open relations with China in 1972. He was there, in 1981 when Ronald Reagan was shot by John Hinkley, Jr (opening photo, bottom row, first image). In 1996 he photographed a relationship of a different sort of Bill Clinton hugging White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
Vietnam
Dirck Halstead was a war photographer assigned to open the first bureau for photography in Saigon, Vietnam for UPI in 1965. He recorded the landing of the first US Marines arriving ashore in Da Nang. He photographed the fall of Saigon eleven years later (opening photo, top row, last photos). That coverage earned him the Overseas Press Club’s Robert Capa Gold Medal.
Photojournalist David Hume Kennerly was with Halstead in Vietnam. Talking about him, Kennerly said, “He covered history in an intelligent way and took great risks doing it.”
“One time in 1972 we were pinned down by North Vietnamese regulars near An Loc,” Kennerly recalled. “South Vietnamese soldiers were dying left and right around us, mortar rounds were exploding, we were taking heavy machine-gun fire from the tree line, when Dirck looked at me and said, ‘Can’t wait to have a drink at the Melody Bar tonight.’ Dirck was cool under fire.”
Darkroom made the difference
When Dirck Halstead was 15 his parents gave him a Kodak Duraflex camera and the darkroom that let him make contact prints of his negatives. He said, “That’s what got me hooked.”
He carried his camera everywhere and effectively, became his high school’s official photographer. He was also working part-time for a local newspaper where he earned $5.00 for each picture the paper printed. The paper’s owner bought nearby papers.
“All of a sudden I was shooting for seven newspapers,” Halstead said. “And I was the only photographer so that $5 per picture started to multiply.”
Guatemala coup
Dirck Halstead was on a school trip at 17 to Guatemala when he found himself photographing a coup there. That made him the youngest war correspondent Life magazine had ever had.
Army
Halstead was drafted. He became a US Army photographer. It was, Halstead said, “the best job I ever had” because it had him traveling all over the world. After being discharged he joined UPI and covered stories in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. and New York before going to Vietnam.
Time magazine
At Time, Dirck Halstead was mainly photographing at the White House during the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s from receiving lines to attempted assassinations. His work for those three decades included creating more than 50 covers. His most famous cover was of President Clinton hugging Monica Lewinsky. It was 1998.
Halstead had a theory that every image a photographer takes lingers in the memory. I was on a panel with him at Fotofusion when he told the story of “the hug.” He was sure that he had seen Monica Lewinsky’s face. He told about hiring an assistant to go through boxes and boxes of Kodachrome slides until, finally, the picture emerged. It was taken at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington on October 23, 1996. In his picture, President Clinton’s back is to the camera. He is embracing Lewinsky and she is smiling. Halstead said, “One frame, in focus. It was perfect” (opening photo, bottom row, last image).
Memoir
Dirck Halstead worked most of his career with film and in darkrooms. He was very interested in digital photography. In 1997 he created the online magazine Digital Journalist.
In 2006, Halstead published his memoir, “Moments in Time: Photos and Stories from One of America’s Top Photojournalists.” Sadly, it is out of print.
He helped create the Briscoe Center’s photojournalism archive. Halstead’s archive has over 500,000 images made on many formats — prints and contact sheets, both in color and black and white, transparencies, 35mm slides and negatives and on 120 film.
Sources: New York Times, Briscoe Center for American History.
More inspirational stories about well-known photographers are in On Photography.
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